The CBE Scroll

Comment by Liz

July 3, 2008 @ 6:41 pm

We have taken a risk in putting up this post at this time when we have already been discussing Prof. Sumner’s suppositions but on the other hand, maybe it’s good to get it all out in the open and deal with these statements.

My first comment would be that it is always bad practice to make sweeping statements about any group of people eg. “Catholics believe/do/are ……” just as it is hard to make a definitive statement which says exactly what ALL egalitarians believe.

We need to clearly enunciate which points are particularly relevant and significantly ‘different’ about the point of view we hold. In doing this we need to be careful to not label ALL complementarians as the same either.

Let’s see how this develops!

Comment by Liz

July 3, 2008 @ 8:04 pm

Also..it would be helpful to google Sarah Sumner and read her interview.

It’s a reminder that we are all on a journey and to respect another Christian’s personal experience even when the conclusions are not the same as ours.

That said..the book is undoubtedly endorsing the complementarian view of marriage.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 1:06 am

Perhaps you mean this article by Sarah Sumners.

Two points.

1. I do not feel that Sumners interacts with the fact that kephale in Greek at that time did not have the meaning “authority over.” She also does not interact with this passage from Cyril of Alexandria.

Cyril of Alexandria,

“Therefore of our race he become first kephale, which is arche, and was of the earth and earthy. Since Christ was named the second Adam, he has been placed as kephale, which is arche, of those who through him have been formed anew unto him unto immortality through sanctification in the spirit. Therefore he himself our arche, which is kephale, has appeared as a human being: indeed, he, being by nature God, has a kephale, the Father in heaven. For, being by nature God the Word, he has been begotten from Him. Because kephale means arche, He established the truth for those who are wavering in their mind that man is the kephale of woman, for she was taken out of him. Therefore one Christ and Son and Lord, the one having as kephale the Father in heaven, being God by nature, became for us a kephale accordingly because of his kinship according to the flesh.”

It is rather difficult to get an exact equivalent in English as it meant “source” “origin” and “beginning.” Yes, I do very much think that Christ, as the second Adam, is the arche of man. That is, God shares his nature with Christ, man shares his nature with woman and Christ shares his nature with man. Paul is attempting to communicate something about the shared nature of Christ and God, and man and woman. It is deeply regretted that Paul’s concern with the divine and human nature of Christ has not been well understood.

2. Anyone who teaches unilateral submission needs to be aware of the real life fact that submission to any kind of abuse, verbal or physical, will reinforce the abuse and cause an increase in the abuse, including physical injury. I think Sumner’s fails in limiting the wife’s refusal to submit only to things that are morally wrong or physical abuse. The entire notion of unilateral submission teaches the one accepting submission to increase his demands on the other. I am deeply concerned that there is not more light on the destructive nature of unilateral submission to human relationships.

I believe this information should be basic training for all seminary instructors and pastors.

Comment by Mary

July 4, 2008 @ 8:49 am

Sue, in reading John Hobbins’ articles, he appears to have taken at face value that Sumner considers “servant-leader” to be a valid meaning of kephale in Ephesians 5. I keep reading her presuppositions, and I’m sorry, but they’re simply not egalitarian. That is one example.

Does anyone know if Sumner anywhere deals adequately with what she thinks a husband is supposed to do with Eph. 5:21 (besides claim it applies to his wife)?

Comment by John Hobbins

July 4, 2008 @ 9:10 am

Thank you, Darrell, for highlighting the series I put together. I’ve been struck by people who have emailed me privately to pursue the conversation further.

For the sake of readers who may not take the time to click through to read the posts, here are two reasons why Sarah Sumner is must reading for egalitarians:

(1) She is honest about how both comps and egals lack integrity in approaching scripture. Both sides in the debate like to use the Bible to rule out the positions of the opposing side and buttress their own positions. Scripture is supposed to stand above us, and be allowed to judge our pre-existing positions. How seldom that happens in this debate. As soon as one reads the Bible through the filter of a higher truth derived from elsewhere, it has been effectively silenced. Both comps and egals tend to do this.

(2) She is an accomplished theologian, and does a fine job of showing how to interpret one scriptural passage in the light of all others. This comes through in her interpretation of Ephesians 5.

Sarah’s work, and Sarah and Jim’s forthcoming book, are well-written examples of theologically responsible exegesis and practical application. But there are other avenues of approach to reflection on the issues comps, compegals, and egals debate.

One avenue is to think historically about gender roles in New Testament times. The work of NT scholars like Carolyn Osiek and Andrew T. Lincoln is illuminating. They argue that Paul instructs his fellow Christians to live out their freedom in Christ within culturally given, hierarchically structured master-slave, husband-wife, parent-child relationships. I’m convinced that neither comps nor egals have yet to reflect seriously enough about what that says about their own positions.

Another avenue of approach is the sociological one. Here the work of Mary Stewart van Leeuwen is helpful. She is thoroughly familiar with studies in the field, and is careful not to make unfounded statements of the kind one hears all the time, such as: complementarianism leads to greater rates of abuse, or: egalitarians have unhappy marriages.

In response to Liz: it sounds to me that you find it necessary to pigeonhole Sarah Sumner into a camp she does not self-identify with: the comp camp. Don’t you hate that when people do that to you? I honestly think Sumner’s approach might serve as a corrective to your own.

In response to Sue: Sumner’s approach to kephale in Paul marks an advance over many other discussions, including your own. For example, Sarah notes that kephale ‘head’ is used metaphorically by Paul. Simplistic glosses like ‘origin’ or ‘authority’ are inherently misleading. Kephale needs to be looked at in connection with Paul’s concurrent metaphorical use of soma ‘body.’ In Ephesians 5, the kephale metaphor is fleshed out in that sense.

As far as “unilateral submission” is concerned, like most egals, you are being less than honest when you fail to note that that in Ephesians 5:24, Paul asks wives to “submit to their husbands in everything.” Paul asks no such thing of husbands. He couldn’t have, without challenging head-on the hierarchical husband-wife, parent-child, master-slave relationships of his day.

Instead, Paul asks husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church: in so doing, patriarchy is challenged from within. Paul’s approach to slavery is similarly complex – just look at Philemon – and is structurally different from the approaches of both comps and egals today. Neither camp seems willing to admit this.

Sarah Sumner’s exegesis of Ephesians 5 is more faithful to that text’s emphases than is your approach. I would also point out that a biblically responsible complementarian will qualify the “in everything” as Andrew Compton did in a comment to one of my posts.

Finally, you allow real life facts as you understand them to overrule the teaching of scripture. The undeniable truth of which you speak – that comp males run the risk of using Paul’s teaching about submission to do anything but love their wives as Christ loved the church – becomes grounds for throwing out the comp framework altogether. It does not follow.

I say that as a pastor who respects, in those under my care, the comp framework of those who accept it, and the egal framework of those who accept it. The Gospel has a lot to say to people in both frameworks.

One’s salvation, one’s wellbeing, does not depend on being an egal, a comp, or a compegal, but on acceptance of God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ. I steadfastly believe that anyone who suggests otherwise has turned from the grace of God to a gospel that is no gospel at all.

Comment by John Hobbins

July 4, 2008 @ 10:02 am

Mary,

Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 5, read in isolation from everything else he wrote and the rest of scripture, might lead and has led ill-intentioned and/or ungodly individuals to ask wives to “submit to their husbands in everything” in unhealthy ways.

But that isn’t the way Christians are supposed to read Scripture. Biblically faithful Christians have always believed that scripture interprets scripture. Once that is done, Paul asking wives to submit to their husbands in everything cannot and will not lead to abuse.

Now, if you reply that the cultural framework which Paul and Peter take for granted, in which lines of authority were very clear in husband-wife, master-slave, and parent-child relationships, is not a cultural framework you feel comfortable with, and which you have no intention of re-creating, as if, in so doing, greater faithful to scriptural teaching would be achieved, I concur with your reservations.

While I am aware that there have been, and still are, cultures in which the wife will address her husband as ‘Lord’ (dominus in Latin), and Peter cites the example positively when he encourages wives to submit to their husbands, even those who are unbelievers (1 Peter 3:6), I don’t think it is necessarily a sign of faithfulness to the Gospel to imitate that practice. On the other hand, I don’t think it is necessarily a sign of unfaithfulness either.

In short, Sarah Sumner’s defense of the servant-leader model of being a husband is not in contradiction with Ephesians 5, and in line with the total witness of the Scripture. This is quite apart from the discussion of how best to understand the complex metaphor of kephale-soma Paul employs therein. Traditional word-study approaches to the meaning of kephale are hopelessly flawed from a linguistic point of view (meaning is not located at the word-level, but at the discourse level) and from a point of view of poetics and rhetoric, since the specific usage of kephale and soma in a complex metaphor has not been given sufficient weight.

I also think it has been and still is possible for Christians within very patriarchal frameworks, including those in which wives address their husbands with honorific titles of respect which are connatural to said frameworks, to live in harmony with the teaching of Paul in Ephesians 5 and that of Peter in 1 Peter 3. I would think that is an obvious fact.

On the other hand, I think it is possible for Christians within an egal framework to live in harmony with Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3. Is it easy to do so? No. It it easy to do so within a comp framework. No, emphatically no.

As if the framework of gender roles one lives in, or chooses to live in, predetermines faithfulness to the Gospel or the opposite! It does not.

The comp egal debate deals with important issues, but they are not first-order issues. They are second-order issues. Those who think otherwise, on either side of the question, risk preaching a gospel at odds with that based on acceptance of God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 12:25 pm

I won’t respond to all of it but two sentences.

Finally, you allow real life facts as you understand them to overrule the teaching of scripture.

That is how we have established democratic governments and abolition of slavery. By allowing real life facts to overrule the teaching of scripture at first glance. If we wish to naively engage in teaching scripture with a disregard for real life, we return to the teaching that substance abuse, gambling, spousal abuse and many other things are not grounds for divorce. This is what many think the scripture teaches and they stick to it.

I wish to get beyond the “teaching of scripture” as law.

I am not saying that you do any of this, John, this is not in response to what you have written but a reflection on Sumners various statements. She would probably even agree with me, but she has not perhaps, made these things explicit in what I have read. I have no desire to set up a tension here. I understand her books to be part of the dialogue. I respect her voice and I wish the same for mine. So this is not a critique of conflict with her, but this is my voice, silenced elsewhere.

A wife should not have to have proof of physical violence in order to separate. I cannot agree with this implied position.

On kephale, I most certainly believe that the head – body metaphor is accurate and reflects Chrysostom’s take on this which I have written about before publically. He says that the head body metaphor reflects perfect unity. But Chrysostom also carefully argues that it does not represent a ruler-governed relationship, and this others fail to do.

I would also point out that a biblically responsible complementarian will qualify the “in everything” as Andrew Compton did in a comment to one of my posts.

Because complementarianism gives sinful males authority, the rule book required for this to be fair to wives in general is infinite. However any godly and kind person may have developed a personally adequate understanding of headship. I am not inclined to confront anyone’s personal behaviour but the teaching per se.

I would like to cite here some things said, by accomplished and articulate (complementarian) bloggers.

“I believe that the assumption of husbandly authority is abusive in itself, even if subtly and covertly, because it puts the wife’s will under the husband’s. It is, by its nature, disrespectful, and shows disregard of the wife.”

“headship is not domineering or abusive unless it means “authority” or “leadership” of women as a sex, or as wives. The problem, in my view, is not with headship, but with the prominent complementarian understanding of what being the “head” means.”

“I so agree that it is abuse even to just ascribe authority to the husband over the wife. On another blogsite it was described as being like a rape of the woman’s spirit or soul.”

These are the common beliefs of many complementarian women. This is not scripture. This is real life. These are not my words. I am not alone is speaking grief to the world on this.

This is from the comment thread which now tops 1200 on this post.

I am incredibly grateful that Denny Burk has allowed an open discussion on his blog. Evidently women have felt the need for space to express their profound emotional rejection of male-based authority in the home, and “over the wife.”

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 12:41 pm

Once that is done, Paul asking wives to submit to their husbands in everything cannot and will not lead to abuse.

This is not real life, because “that” is never “done.”

Comment by John Hobbins

July 4, 2008 @ 2:48 pm

Suzanne,

I’m glad to see you speaking with respect for others, like Sarah Sumner, who do not see eye to eye with you. If you wish to comment on my blog in that spirit, you are welcome to do so.

I’m as happy as the next person to live in a democracy, indeed, in that peculiar democracy of the United States of America, on this 4th of July. The US is one of the few democracies in the world today to guarantee a very robust practice of free speech.

But I wouldn’t be so dumb as to claim that the Bible rules that form of democracy in and all others, democratic and non-democratic, out. I would rather argue that the kind of democracy US citizens enjoy and the constitutional monarchy of a country like Jordan are both ruled in by Scripture. What matters is how one acts within that framework. There certainly have been occasions when King Hussein has acted more honorably than I have ever seen an American president act.

The same sort of logic applies to the issues at hand.

Are you claiming that Chrysostom was not a patriarchalist and a hierarchalist? But he was; every serious researcher knows that. He also allowed his Christianity to reshape patriarchy from within to a greater extent than the other Church Fathers did. That is what makes his exegesis of particular interest to many today.

But like the rest of the Fathers, Chrysostom did not challenge per se the hierarchical arrangement of roles of his day in the husband-wife, parent-child, and master-slave spheres. He is not an egalitarian ante litteram. He is what Troeltsch and others call a “love-patriarchalist.”

You continue to state that anyone who is a patriarchalist and hierarchalist promotes a position that is “abusive in itself.” I have argued the contrary. One thing, in any case, should be clear: if patriarchalism and hierarchalism are abusive in and of themselves, then Paul, Peter, Chrysostom, Augustine, and countless others before and after them were wrong not to oppose it in whatever form it rears its ugly head: complementarianism and slavery are just two examples.

That would be honest and consistent, to say that, yes, Paul and Peter got it wrong, we know better. I have friends who say precisely that, and I respect that position.

I detest, on the other hand, the tendency of egals to make Paul and Peter into knights in shining armor whose sole purpose, it might appear, is deployment in the cause of routing the comps. This can only be accomplished by remaking Paul and Peter into a likeness not their own. It makes no more sense to do this than the tendency of comps to treat Paul and Peter as if they were the ghost-writers of the Danvers Affirmation. Phoney baloney. All of it. On both sides.

It’s time to admit that the Gospel can be lived out within a huge variety of cultures, most of which include forms of government, rules of the workplace, and family organization which are far from ideal from any number of points of view – yet said cultural norms are not specifically opposed in scripture. Indeed, many of them, in a given time and place, are said to enjoy – with provisos – God’s approval.

If this cannot be admitted, it might be better to look for a smaller, more sectarian God than the one portrayed to us in scripture.

Comment by John

July 4, 2008 @ 3:00 pm

You say: This is not real life, because “that” is never “done.”

Apparently then, we are to excise the guilty passage from scripture. I fail to see how this conclusion is less than inevitable.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 3:14 pm

Thank you for inviting me back to your blog. However, I am worried that you will always act as arbiter of what I can and cannot say on your blog (as is your right) so I appreciate this mediated forum.

I do not make Peter and Paul into knights in shining armour. I am working on a different level entirely. I am working on the level of the meaning of the texts, on the one hand, and on the level of real life, on the other. I do not claim to present a perfect synthesis. I present two problems. I am open to what Peter and Paul might have been saying.

I would like first to address the consitutional monarchy vs a democracy. You are correct in pointing out the equal functional capacity of these two. However, marriage, as an authority-submission relationship, governed by no more laws than the scriptures, is subject to abuse. The interpretation of Gen. 3:16 by complementarians, that the abuse of a sinful husband is a response to the rebellion of a sinful wife, places the judiciary blame on the wife. This is the formal stated position of the major speakers of complementarianism and is rightly deplored by many.

I would equate marriage as an authority-submission relationship to rule of kings by divine right. It took much soul-searching to establish a constitutional monarchy, to establish independence in the USA, to establish independent churches. These things all required that people go back to scripture and reinterpret it. The Reformation is based on the tradition of reinterpreting authority.

More later.

Comment by John

July 4, 2008 @ 4:16 pm

I can’t think of any arrangement that is not subject to abuse. Marriage, whether understood as an authority-submission relationship, or an egalitarian relationship, whether it is governed by (supposedly) sola scriptura, or a thousand laws added on top, is subject to abuse.

At almost every wedding I preach at – four or five are in the pipeline as we speak – I stress the contents of 1 Cor 13, written by that hard-bitten, unsentimental man named Paul. I don’t think anyone can read Paul’s definition of love without knowing, deep down inside, that it is true. Every word of it. I can preach confidently to groom and bride that if they but exemplify love as defined by Paul in their lives and in their marriage, everything will go fine, and their marriage will last until death intervenes.

Now, what difference does the gendered construction of authority one lives in make? As it happens, almost every couple I marry now are non-ideological egals, usually but not always the children of non-ideological comps. It is always a blast to talk about how things have changed so quickly, and not always for the better. (Those from families in which ideological egalitarianism rules the roost are the more likely ones to be attracted to ideological compism, but that is another story.)

The result is that in counseling and at the wedding, I look both of them in the eye equally, with all the combined gentleness and severity I can muster, and tell them: your marriage stands or falls based on your adherence to the concept of love found in 1 Cor 13.

In weddings and in counseling with comps, the situation, in a sense, is more interesting. I can talk freely about submission, obedience, and authority, concepts comps wish to understand positively – whether they succeed in doing so, that’s another matter. In theory, they are working with a full deck of cards, whereas egals work with only a half a deck. That’s because things like submission, obedience, and authority are profoundly biblical concepts, and egals tend to run away from them in capitulation to modernity, not out of faithfulness to scripture.

But get this. Just like in cards, people get cocky when they have a great hand to play. So often, comps lose because they think the cards will win it for them, and they stop thinking. You can have a wonderful array of concepts in your quiver, but each arrow must be shot with love, or it amounts to nothing, worse than nothing.

Is it really any different among egals?

I belong to a reformed branch of Christianity, the oldest of them all, the Waldensians. I know all about how bad Catholicism and traditionalisn are, but I also know it’s not that simple. Some of the most beautiful Christians I know are Roman Catholics. They work within a framework that is, in your words, “subject to abuse.” They work within a framework that abused my forefathers and foremothers in the faith.

And yet it has been one of the great spiritual turning points in my life to have been involved in the very very Roman Catholic movement known as the Focolari, and to have learned deeply from the witness and the word of Chiara Lubich and the mostly celibate women and men who form the core of that movement. Talk about authority! Talk about submission! Yet you would not believe how powerfully God has been at work through the Focolari. I just heard from home in Italy that their publishing house will put out a volume of my father-in-law’s sermons (in Italian). Yet my father-in-law, whom I love dearly, is an unreconstructed Barthian and – Communist! But you know, the Focolari, who take 1 Cor 13 to heart, can handle that.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 6:52 pm

John,

You write,

They work within a framework that is, in your words, “subject to abuse.”

No, I have explicitly said that complementarianism, as it is defined by the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, is abusive.

“Subsequent to the Fall the judgment pronounced on the woman included that her desire (t’shuqa) would be for her husband (Gen. 3:16), which in all likelihood conveys the woman’s sinful desire to manipulate and control her husband rather than to lovingly submit to him. This is suggested by the close parallel in the following chapter, where it is said that sin’s desire is for Cain, clearly in the sense of desire or mastery (gen. 4:7.)” Kostenberger

This doctrine teaches that women are created for submission, to function within a submission-authority relationship, and any expression of non-submission is sinful. The fact that a woman makes any decision independently of her husband, can be held up as her sinful rebellion. The husband’s sin is a response to the sin of the wife.

Unfortunately any decision on the part of a wife, any decision at all, can be held up as a pretext.

I can honestly say that in the many admirable traditional marriages that I have seen, this doctrine has been mercifully absent, and women are the mistresses of their own home. Sadly, the complementarianism of today, makes the wife have only a submissive role in all domains and arenas and every room in the house, to the authoritative role of the husband in all domains and arenas, and every room in the house.

This means that if the wife cooks a meal and cannot find the required vegetables in the market that day, and has chosen a substitute, she is in a state of non-submission.

Please do not make light of my examples. I am sure you must realize that I am not an ideological egal, I am egal by circumstance. I am ideologically against the official teaching of complementarianism, the ascription of prior sin to the woman for expressing personal will.

I am convinced that this conversation is significantly hampered by a lack of understanding each others terms. Let me once again express my respect for those who live appropriately within a traditional framework.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 7:46 pm

John,

I would like to respond to this paragraph.

To egals who criticize Sumner’s take on kephale: Sumner’s approach to kephale ‘head’ in Paul marks an advance over most other discussions. For example, Sarah notes that kephale ‘head’ is used metaphorically by Paul. Simplistic glosses like ‘origin’ or ‘authority’ are inherently misleading. Kephale needs to be looked at in connection with Paul’s concurrent metaphorical use of soma ‘body.’ In Ephesians 5, the kephale metaphor is fleshed out in that sense.

I find it difficult to believe that treating kephale as a metaphor is an advance, much as I respect this point. Chrysostom argued that the kephale – soma relationship, (kephale as a metaphor) was Paul’s use of the word.

“For if we are the Body of Christ, and severally members thereof, 1 Corinthians 12:27 and in this way He is our head, He cannot be the head of them who are not in the Body and rank not among the members.”

He then proceeded to explain that one could not take this metaphor in exactly the same way for the God Christ relationship, as for the man/woman relationship,

“Therefore if we choose to take the term, head, in the like sense in all the clauses, the Son will be as far removed from the Father as we are from Him. Nay, and the woman will be as far removed from us as we are from the Word of God. And what the Son is to the Father, this both we are to the Son and the woman again to the man. And who will endure this?”

So, one cannot say that taking kephale as a metaphor is an advance on other theologians. It is not. However, one can say that unpacking that metaphor is essential. Chrysostom continues,

“But they stumble against themselves. For if the man be the head of the woman, and the head be of the same substance with the body, and the head of Christ is God, the Son is of the same substance with the Father. Nay, say they, it is not His being of another substance which we intend to show from hence, but that He is under subjection.”

And he continues,

“But do you understand the term head differently in the case of the man and the woman, from what thou dost in the case of Christ? Therefore in the case of the Father and the Son, must we understand it differently also. How understand it differently? says the objector. According to the occasion . For had Paul meant to speak of rule and subjection, as you say, he would not have brought forward the instance of a wife, but rather of a slave and a master.”

So you see from this that Chrysostom carefully unpacked the metaphor to deny rule and subjection as the core meaning of the metaphor, but rather being of the “same substance” and later “first principle.”

This is then the meaning of the metaphor (for C), that the kephale-soma relationship is one of the same substance, a shared nature, of like passions, perfect unity and organic interdependence. Since two must come from one, to be of the same nature, it was important to establish a kephale, also called the arche by Cyril. This was, I believe, the also the first principle, aitia in Chrysostom.

So, an understanding of the terms arche, and aitia, and how this differs from a exousia of authority and submission are worthy concepts of contemplation, and I argue, allowable discussion.

You also truly say that Chrysostom is a gender patriarchalist. But I can only say that I am in conversation with these texts. I hve no desire to misrepresent him or any other author. There writings are available to anyone.

On another point, what do you think of the use of soteria in the household in Aristotle and how this relates to the use of soter in Eph. 5, I would be interested in hearing your take on that.

If Sumners also interacts with the writings of the church fathers on kephale, I would be most interested in hearing about that. I would like to know her take on the discourse on kephale in Chrysostom, Cyril and anyone else. I do not in any way wish to present myself as a scholar of the church fathers, and would like to hear what others have written on kephale.

I am interested in keeping the conversation open.

Comment by John

July 4, 2008 @ 8:03 pm

I have met many complementarians in my life. Some of them are among my friends.

I have yet to meet one who regards their wife as in non-submission because she “cannot find the required vegetables in the market that day.” Your example sounds like an odd little story from the Talmud – which is full of marvelous and beautiful anecdotes, but off-color ones, too.

There must be someone who believes what you imply complementarians generally believe. But with all due respect, you are setting up a straw man.

What complementarians believe and how they actually behave cannnot be determined by reading whoever you are getting the vegetable story from. Any more than what feminists believe and how they actually behave can be determined by reading Betty Friedan and reading her bio. Do not imitate the rhetoric of anti-feminists.

It’s nice that you find no grounds to criticize traditional frameworks. In my view, you are too generous by half.

On the other hand, you are too critical by half in your treatment of your arch-opponents, who are, it appears, evangelical comps of the Reformed persuasion.

I don’t see much rhyme nor reason in all of this.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 9:59 pm

I have met many complementarians in my life. Some of them are among my friends.

Same here. In fact, most of the women protesting Dr. Ware’s sermon are complementarian women. The rhyme and reason is that this teaching, that a wife owes unilateral submission in all things, and lives to fulfill only the will of the husband, has spread to my former church, and is being taught to vulnerable young people. I am not fighting a straw man. I wish I were.

I am sorry that you don’t like my vegetable story.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 10:25 pm

John,

You write,

It’s nice that you find no grounds to criticize traditional frameworks.

I wrote,

Let me once again express my respect for those who live appropriately within a traditional framework.

Correct me if I am wrong but is that the sentence that you were responding to? I regret that I am not able to keep track of the dialogue well enough to figure out which of my comments you are responding to.

Comment by John

July 4, 2008 @ 11:03 pm

I just got back from the fireworks. What an amazing sight.

Chrysostom is worth reading carefully. So are many other Fathers, even when they have views which do not reinforce our own. Tertullian and Augustine deserve a hearing. Otherwise, one falls prey to the danger of cherrypicking, and never really getting a sense of what is was like to be a Christian woman in Greco-Roman antiquity, the good and the bad. It is a fascinating topic.

Most of the stuff written by theologians regarding the Patristic period until recently is not particularly useful, except for general orientation. Theologians have tended to have an axe to grind of some sort. Trust me. I’m trained as one.

Just as is true in biblical studies, it has been, and still is, very hard for people to let people like Origen, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose, the Gregories, etc., be themselves, peculiarities included, rather than what we wish they might have been. The same applies to the Reformers, to people like Zinzendorf and John Wesley, and so it goes.

It is depressing that the vegetable story reflects the views of anyone. It certainly does not surprise me that it does not reflect the views of complementarians generally. In that sense, I referred to it as a straw man. It is often the case that movement leaders say some really weird things. For example, it is not difficult to come up with some deliciously odd quotes from John Wesley, Dwight Moody, or Charles Finney, not about women in particular (that too, quite possibly), but about various subjects.

I have one final remark, and that has to do with terminology. Ultimately, terminology is about self-identification. If someone says they are complementarian, then they are. If someone says they are egal, they are. If someone says they aren’t either one, then they aren’t either one. Our usage of the terms has to be adjusted to the facts on the ground, not the other way around.

There is also a place for pointing out that each of the terms is a misnomer for x number of reasons. But it’s no way to start a conversation with someone by calling them by a label they reject, or refusing to call them by a label they accept.

The term ‘complementarian’ has come to have quite a broad usage. For example, traditional Catholics and Orthodox “let [the term] pass,” as they have said over at Touchstone magazine, because they share many of the concerns evangelical comps do, for example: a rejection of female presbyters and “neutered” hymnals and Bibles; a desire to conserve the concept of headship, which, they believe, on the general witness of the Fathers, implies a hierarchical dimension which they value positively. There is also a broader sense of agreement that stretches far beyond that.

If what you are saying is that evangelical comps could learn a thing or two by reading deeply in the Fathers, I heartily concur. If they did, their framework would be stretched but not broken.

In short, traditional Catholics and Orthodox sense a common bond with evangelical comps. Rightly so. In my view, evangelical egals have yet to come to grips with the reasons for this. It is simplistic and self-defeating to write the convergence off.

And guess what? Traditionalists in the Catholic and Orthodox branches of Christianity are enjoying a resurgence, not least among the young. Now, I’ve said it before: traditionalism is not beyond criticism, on responsible theological and biblical grounds, any more that compism and egalism are. So that’s not my point. My point is that it’s time to stop demonizing the various positions, and recognize that each of the many sides brings valid concerns to the table. That would be a minimum requirement for the debate to move beyond being a war and a shouting match to being a truly Christian conversation.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 11:57 pm

One of the trends which I feel I must continue to speak out on, and many complementarian women agree, is the teaching which caricatures the woman in this way,

“The fall introduced this illicit urge and tendency toward usurpation — bucking his authority,” Ware said. “What this [verse] calls for is respect for his authority and who he is as husband.”

Other terms used on the CBMW website to translate and interpret t’shuqa in Gen. 3:16 are “fighting” “resisting” “usurping authority” “attempting to master” “manipulate” “rebel” and so on. The list is long. The ESV footnotes have “desire against.” Those who speak for the CBMW concur, that the sin of woman is the overriding rejection of male authority and the attempt to overpower man.

The sinful husband on the other hand, is characterized as either abusive or passive. He could be either of these two or presumably somewhere in between.

But if we look back at Gender and Grace by Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen we read,

“In Gen. 3:16, the woman is being warned that she will experience an unreciprocated longing for intimacy with the man. … [she} wants a mate and she gets a master, she wants a lover and she gets a lord, she wants a husband and she gets a hierarch.” page 44

However, those who read the works of CNMW are denied this knowledge. The woman, who through inordinate desire for intimacy, receives abuse, is told that she is rebellious and resisting proper authority of the male. She has brought abuse on herself through lack of submission.

Yes, this is taught. Women are subjected to this kind of emotional abuse. Women are not being taught that it is their submission to abuse which brings on further abuse. And so the danger grows.

I was labeled egalitarian by others, not myself, but I need to be responsible for how I am labeled. If others, who call themselves complementarian, do not agree with this discourse on women, they need to be responsible for how they interact with this teaching. Many complementarian women are speaking against it.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 12:52 am

PS I happily read Augustine, but what of Tertullian would you recommend? I believe he said something somewhere which offended me.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 1:09 am

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I just wanted to admit that I have read a bit of Tertullian but not much and I don’t know what would be of value.

Comment by Liz

July 5, 2008 @ 1:33 am

“In response to Liz: it sounds to me that you find it necessary to pigeonhole Sarah Sumner into a camp she does not self-identify with: the comp camp. Don’t you hate that when people do that to you? I honestly think Sumner’s approach might serve as a corrective to your own.”

I would like to point out that I particularly wrote the first 2 posts on this thread because I wanted to promote a good attitude towards those who believe differently or explain their viewpoint in words and terminology which could result in misunderstandings.

Personally, I expect that people will sometimes put me into ‘camps’ or get the wrong idea about my beliefs – that is a fact of life. Try as we might to not offend or give occasion for people to make wrong assumptions, it happens!

Going back to my 2nd post (86905) I realise I wrote in a ‘black & white” manner which I will often discourage in others when I said “the book is undoubtably endorsing a complementarian view of marriage”

The word ‘undoubtably’ gives no room to move so I would change that comment to “As I read certain statements from the book, it seemed to promote a complementarian view of marriage”

The statements listed on the website are as follow…

“There are 3 main dynamics of biblical marriage
1. one-ness between head and body
2. sacrifice and submission
3. love and respect

The term ’servant leader’ was also used which is a current description of the role of a husband as perceived by complementarians.

In an interview with Prof.Sumner about her earlier book re men & women in the church, she made these statements when questioned about what she hoped to see as an outcome of people reading her book.
“I want to hear….’I want to be the kind of husband who trust God enough to exalt my wife as the Father exalts the Son’ or ‘I want to be the kind of wife who submits to her husband in everything”

One last thing…..the vegetable story is not unrealistic. This sort of thing happens among families where ‘headship’ is taken very seriously and we have been involved with couples who live like this and also could give you quotes from Christian books which tell stories of such happenings as examples of how to be a ‘good’ wife. People within academic circles may not experience such behaviour, but within the ‘rank & file’ church attenders it is quite commonplace.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 8:11 am

Suzanne,

Tertullian is offensive, on this issue and on others. But that’s the point. It’s essential to bend one’s ear and one’s heart to the teachings found in the Old and New Testament and among the Church Fathers and the Reformers and let them sting, even open up a wound or two, all within the context of a vital relationship with the One who loves all (even the enemy) and judges all (even, perhaps especially, his friends).

Not much learning takes place if we just ransack the Fathers and Reformers for quotes that back up our own positions.

Tertullian ends badly. I know, in some PC quarters, there are no unhappy endings, but let’s get real for a moment. Someone needs to write a sympathetic book about how the seeds of Tertullian’s destruction are already present in his orthodox period.

I know: it’s un-American to recommend reading a story without a happy ending. I have colleagues who won’t preach on a biblical passage unless they can make it seem to have a Hollywood ending. I like movies that end with a smooch as much as the next person, but the smooch doesn’t mean much if there are not tears in the eyes at the same time.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 8:33 am

A good way to handle issues like the one you mention re: Gen 3:16 is to put the matter in a larger context, such as, what have Jews and Christians thought about sexuality before the Fall and after redemption, in the age to come, down through the ages? It immediately becomes clear that believers have always been sharply divided on these questions. The same applies to the question of whether gender hierarchy precedes the Fall or is a consequence of it. It seems to me that the Fathers try to have it both ways.

Why anyone would expect these issues to be resolved one way or another this side of heaven is beyond me. I have my own, strongly held views, which happen to be in tolerable agreement with current cultural commonplaces. But this makes me suspicious of my own exegetical conclusions! Did I mention that feminist scholars I’ve read have been among my best teachers in the art of self-suspicion?

Am I being too honest here? Sorry, but I think that is what is often missing in this debate.

Beyond that, there are plenty of comp exegetes of Gen 3:16 who interpret the passage along rather different lines than the one you note (by the way, the interpretation you cite goes back to a woman exegete, I believe – the name slips me at the moment – in line with ordinary scholarly practice, attribution should go to her first of all).

The comp position is really weak if it must depend on K’s interpretation of choice of Gen 3:16. But K knows this, too, to judge from his wording.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 9:02 am

Liz,

most of my experience with comps comes through being a pastor and relating to non-ideological comps many of whom now have white hair, quite a number of whom are now celebrating silver, even 60th and 70th wedding anniversaries.

In the “non-ideological comp” classification I also include women – and they are not as unusual as some people want to make out – who will tell me they remember promising to obey their husbands and in their opinion, things started to go bad when the vows were changed. One look at their children’s marriages, if they even have remained married, reveals one source of this point of view. Egal marriages, too often, are a form of negative advertisement. In my view, the wisest of the women of the many generations of women who obeyed their husbands recognize that there is no going back to marriage as they experienced it, with both positive and negative results for their children and now grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

True, a number of non-ideological comps who now have white hair are downright peeved, and rightly so, at their children and grandchildren who have not stuck out their unhappy marriages as they did, with obvious and very serious negative effects on their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

How does it look in terms of young comps from a pastor’s point of view? Well, it has to be pointed out I work in a predominantly egal context, the United Methodist Church. But I notice that, among the ubiquitous parenting classes that young on-fire Christians like to start up, there is an almost universal liking for a kind of comp-lite approach to the questions at hand.

I realize that the kind of people you are likely to minister to, and I have no doubt that God is blessing your ministry, and I wish you only the best with it – are going to be recovering comps of some rather hard-core version, sometimes literally – from my point of view, okay – a pornographic version of compism.

As for vegetable comps, the young people in the congregations I have served and serve who eat up comp-lite resources would giggle their hearts out at the story.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 10:46 am

John,

It appears that I remember Tertullian rather well then after all. And since I am a woman, who lived under a similar regime, perhaps it stings even more for me than for those for whom it is purely academic. Perhaps someone who was reared in that reality, does know what it sounds like. You speak to me as if I had not read the church fathers in general, or the reformers, or anything else. I was reared on this stuff.

On Gen 3:16, just because women have been taught that they are the cause of their own violent assault for thousands of years, that is no reason to go on with it. Naturally, as you say, history has been divided on this.

On t’shuqa, Grudem cites Susan Foh, but other complementarian authors seem not to depend on her. This teaching that t’shuqa means that women “rebel” or “control” and “manipulate” is basic and even, I would say, on the CBMW website, pervasive, a foundational belief.

I sat and listened to a famous complementarian who is a friend of mine, expound on t’shuqa, that women rebelling against their role is the cause of divorce. Among those women I know who are divorced, some had been stay-at-home moms until their husband left them for a younger woman. How hurtful a sermon that was. I had a short discussion with him afterwards and asked if he thought that was the case for the people that he knew, that it was the wife’s rebellion, and he said “not so much” or something of that order. People need to get real.

CBMW stigmatizes women and they need to stop. They say that a complementarian man will exalt women. But they insult and tear down women at any chance. There is an industry around proving that Junia was a man. It will pop up again. There is an industry around proving that women were created for subordination. There is an industry around getting women out of the pulpit and they succeeded in my former church. How do they exalt women? (I don’t want to hear about the baby thing. We are all over 50 here.)

John,

You are comparing generations not ideologies. Certainly my mother vowed to obey my father. And she became the mistress of the home. If he did not like a vegetable he politely and without comment did not eat the vegetable and was exempt from eating it by my mother, who made us children eat it.Essentially, I would say, my father did not have to obey my mother, but we all had to. They treated each other as equal and opposite. That is not the case for “complementarianism” where the man reflects the authority of the father, and the wife reflects the submission of the son. Each one only reflects one aspect of the image of God, ever. The wife has no authority, and the man has no submission. He is to care for, but only as a function of authority.

I know lots of people of the older generation as well, and that is simply another conversation. There is absolutely no way to compare the older generation and our generation. Comp teaching proper only came on in the 70’s, so those that you are talking about are traditional, no matter what they call themselves now. That is an entirely different thing.

I know two women my age in comp marriages who have scars on their wrists. They don’t have professions, and they don’t know how to leave. I would say that the damage is way beyond a divorce. I sat and listened for three hours. She asks, how will I get the windows cleaned. “I can’t do the higher one’s myself, and I do not have permission to call someone in. I have no knowledge of our finances and I am not allowed to hire people.” The husband is quite wealthy BTW in a highly paid profession.

The non-Christian women that I know are either in very stable, non-hierarchical marriages, or divorced because their husband found a younger woman. They are not rebellious feminist career women.

I refuse to have all the disdain and blame for divorce and unhappiness in this world placed on the women of my generation.

Men and women do things that are hurtful and damaging, equally. Both men and women can abuse, abandon, and betray. There is enough finger pointing that has gone on. I maintain that the complementarian teaching, that women were subordinate in creation and by their rebellion bring abuse upon themselves, shifts the blame from man to woman and does not protect women but exposes them to further abuse.

It is time to stop the emotional abuse of interpreting the Bible to put down and blame women.

Back to the vegetable story. It is time that people stop laughing at abuse, psychological or otherwise. It is in very poor taste. Like some vegetables I know.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 11:18 am

No one, of course, is laughing at abuse.

But as soon as the argument is reduced to recounting stories of abuse endured within one framework or the other, what is one to do? It is a conversation stopper.

And you are welcome, Suzanne, to your point of view, which grows directly out of your experience. No one can or should take that away from you.

As a pastor, I deal with a different range of experiences than you do. Abuse is one problem among many in the marriages of the people in my congregation. It is not the most common one – unless “abuse” is defined in such a way that it is the constant experience of most married couples (some people do define it this way). Divorce for foolish reasons is.

I encourage both egals and comps to work out their salvation with fear and trembling within the frameworks they are comfortable with, and seek to see the Gospel speak to both situations. You will never be happy with this. It’s one of my many failings you will have to put up with, I’m afraid.

I think you are looking for some way to pin the world’s problems on the authority-submission template.
I cannot subscribe to this view, nor to the dishonesty that results when those who hold this view treat biblical texts that presuppose that template, but wish to claim nevertheless that the biblical texts in question presuppose another template.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 11:35 am

John,

Some laugh at abuse. You live and work in an environment largely untouched by the teachings of CBMW. I have lived the opposite. The comments are climbing on Denny Burk’s posts, to 1260. These are complementarian and former complementarian women who have had enough.

Many women are not “comfortable” within the complementarian framework of CBMW. But as those who are “under authority” they have no way to “work out their salvation” except by further submission, hence the vegetable story.

The contrast between you and me is not pastor and layperson, scholar and schoolteacher; the contrast is between a man who has lived in an egalitarian reality and a woman who has lived in a complementarian reality.

I think you are looking for some way to pin the world’s problems on the authority-submission template. I cannot subscribe to this view, nor to the dishonesty that results when those who hold this view treat biblical texts that presuppose that template, but wish to claim nevertheless that the biblical texts in question presuppose another template.

Whose dishonesty are you referring to? And can you give an example of what you are talking about.

This is a serious charge. Could you define it and quote an example. I don’t want to misunderstand you.

If you choose to dismiss the research of Linda Belleville, whose work I use and cite, you would do well to read it first, and argue against it point by point, rather than tossing out words like “dishonesty.”

Comment by Mary

July 5, 2008 @ 11:48 am

Yes, John, Scripture does interpret Scripture, which is why I don’t accept that Sumner is accurate in saying that “servant leader” is an acceptable way to understand KEPHALE in Eph. 5, and that she deals either inaccurately or not at all with “Submit yourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ” as applying to husbands. It certainly DOES apply to husbands. Expecting Scripture to tell husbands as a class that they must submit to their wives, or else that isn’t expected of them, is ludicrous. Again, because Scripture does indeed interpret Scripture…at least when one reads them for what they say instead of looking for a loophole to support a societal norm, such as patriarchy.

Comment by Mary

July 5, 2008 @ 11:56 am

Something occurs to me, John.

Perhaps you could show where Scripture tells husbands to be authorities over their wives. I’d like it to be as explicit, of course, as that sadly-missing “husbands, submit to your wives” that you and Sumner rightly say is missing in Scripture. Because, since it must be spelled out to husbands as a class in order to be taken seriously — being a general commandment, such as submitting to one another not being specific enough to apply to husbands — it certainly must be found in Scripture, if indeed it is to be taught and counseled and preached as a necessary principle.

I think it’s important to note that Scripture also has no GENERAL principle of telling us to be authorities over one another, either. So, until someone can show categorically that at least a class-specific commandment exists, given the lack of a general commandment, I will continue to believe that it is both unscriptural and ungodly to teach that husbands are to be authorities over their wives. Since Scripture interprets Scripture, as you have said and I have heartily agreed, such a command would go against a number of commands that adult believers are NOT to behave in such a worldly way over one another.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 12:52 pm

Suzanne,

I also want to affirm something I hear you saying: that nothing is gained from blaming women as a class OR blaming men as a class for the woes of this world.

It also appears that you are fine with traditional authority-submission templates, so long as they don’t reach pathological extremes, such as that found in Tertullian or in vegetable comps. If so, that would be another point of agreement. I want to understand Tertullian and vegetable comps. I want to figure out why they think like they do, and meet them on their ground. But I don’t want to become like them.

On the other hand, I don’t think the relationship your mother and father had was typical of their generation, though it was one possible variation on a theme, and still is today – I’ve seen it often enough – among, for example, conservative Lutherans. But let me recount, briefly, another, more common subtype I know of first hand.

It goes like this: the man of the house, de jure, makes the important decisions (outside of Kinder, Kuche, und Kirche). The lady of the house defers to him on principle. Unless he gets it wrong – alas, this happens. Then she intervenes, on the basis of whatever moral authority she has, and a tense moment ensues, in which the spiritual and moral maturity of everyone involved is on the line, and there is no script to follow. The stories that come out of these tense moments are often searingly beautiful – or the opposite: the death of a family, the loss of trust and intimacy, is also a result on occasion.

(In well-functioning egal families, by the way, I’m not so sure things are very different. In any case, a couple that must constantly negotiate who has the final say on matters large and small will self-destruct on that basis.)

The situation as I see it is this: comp families need to be encouraged to model their sense of hierarchy on the saner versions of that template known to us from Christian history. They can and should read Chrysostom, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are good authors to read on the subject among old-school Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and so on. I actually think there are good comp-lite materials available by contemporary authors. My wife Paola, I know, has chosen to use some on occasion (with some gnashing of the teeth; she is a dyed-in-the-wool egal). I prefer to work straight from the Bible myself, but that’s my training.

Egal families need to move beyond the outright rejection of the exercise of authority to a wise and routinized use of it. For example, if that means that the woman of the house runs the show with respect to Kinder, Kuche, und Kirche (sorry: that means children, the kitchen, and church) and the man of the house, with respect to the rest, so be it. I certainly can think of worse arrangements.

Comment by Dana Ames

July 5, 2008 @ 1:06 pm

John #86928,

I have noticed the convergence between _some_ evangelical comps and RC and EO. The issues you cite are real, but not always why people turn in that direction.

Sometimes people flee one branch of Christianity for another, trying to get away from what they see as the dissolution of things they hold dear, and thinking that all will be well if they can just get somewhere where those things aren’t falling apart. I refer you to Rod Dreher, who became RC and then EO. Certainly his story is not that one-dimensional, but he freely admits that’s a significant part of it.

I changed branches of Christianity, from RC to EvProt, because I believed the theology better interpreted the bible. I am on the way to changing again, because I believe EO theology better interprets the bible. One of the ways this gets worked out is that in EO hardly anyone is tied up in knots with hierarchy in the home. Domestic violence is specifically repudiated on the theological grounds that all *humans* are created in the image of God and deserve respect- no differentiation whatsoever between men and women as human, created in the image of God, and deserving respect. I find that encountering the idea in EO theology of what being a Person means, and what is understood by being in communion with one another as Persons, and what that means, Prot notions about “egalitarianism” is actually rather complementary :) -and “complementarianism” get blown away in the wind…

My experience growing with devout RC parents was that both the official teaching and the lived-out practicality had nothing to do with the issues over which “comps” and “egals” are fighting. It was very simple: love and respect one another, and let each person in the marriage do what they are capable of and gifted for doing, for the benefit of the family. That’s the deeper -and much more sensible- reason the RC’s “let the term pass”. Hierarchy is really not about who’s in charge in the family.

In fact, in the EO marriage ceremony, there are no vows. Eph 5:21-28 is read, but not exegeted- (for that, one would be referred to the Fathers, who were on the whole, as I’ve encountered them, more generous than we typically give them credit for if we haven’t read them…) There are blessings and prayers- and the “crown of martyrdom” is held over both heads. Meaningfully and sincerely asking one another for forgiveness is highly valued in EO. (Divorce is taken very seriously and is a grave failing and a sin, but dealt with as a reality of life, like other sin. If the marriage should fail, one is not excommunicate because of it as in RC. Marriage after divorce is “allowed”, with much pastoral guidance.)

Hierarchy in RC and EO is about apostolic succession and how that reaches to and through bishops and priests, and, in RC, deacons. In terms of the liturgy, priests/bishops are male not because being male is somehow “worth more” than being female, but because the liturgy is the real “drama” of worship uniting heaven and earth in and out of time- Jesus unites them both and brings life from one to the other, and Jesus was incarnate as a male human. (The point is his humanity, not his maleness.) I don’t have a problem with that. I also don’t have a problem with Prots ordaining women.

RC and EO- especially EO- are in no way hung up about qualified women teaching seminarians or mixed groups, or preaching. Even from the pulpit.

Search the I’net for “restoration of Orthodox diaconate to women” and see that, though this is not likely to happen soon, there is no true theological problem with women ordained as deacons, because the diaconate in EO is not anything like an “apprentice priesthood”. It had a different function entirely.

Some thoughts for your consideration.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 1:20 pm

John,

I am responding here to a comment that you made oh your own blog.

“It becomes clear that the concept of ’source’ was heard by mother-tongue exegetes, but so was the concept of ‘authority.’ The Fathers, including Chrysostom, understood a passage like Ephesians to support a hierarchical model of authority in marriage – rightly so: that’s why the metaphor is used by Paul in the context of asking wives to submit to their husbands in all things.

But the Church Fathers Christianized the hierarchical “Aristotelian” model with greater or lesser thoroughness. My admiration is strongest for those who did so with thoroughness.”

First, let me preface this by saying that Chrysostom was patriarchal. However, I have not yet found that he interpreted the word kephale as authority.

In his homily on Ephesians 5, he writes,

“Then after saying, The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is of the Church, he further adds, and He is the Saviour of the body. For indeed the head is the saving health of the body. He had already laid down beforehand for man and wife, the ground and provision of their love, assigning to each their proper place, to the one that of authority and forethought, to the other that of submission.”

Do you think that he is deriving authority from the word kephale? Or is he assigning to kephale the meaning of soteria, the preservation/health/security of the household found in Aristotle?

We have to take this in conjunction with his homily in 1 Cor. 11 where he explicitly denies that “Christ is the head of the body” refers to ruler and governed. I believe that Chrysostom presupposes authority and submission in marriage for other reasons. He believes that this is the only way to avoid contention in sinful humanity – Aristotelian.

However, he also recognizes that if a husband acts the tyrant (authenteo) that will create dissension in the wife – the opposite of what I have quoted earlier. And so, where some stigmatize women for spurnng the authority of the husband and tell the husband that he must lead, Chrysostom said that only gentle affection will win over a wife, and not authority. He writes,

“She is of God’s fashioning. Thou reproachest not her, but Him that made her; what can the woman do?”

“Though your wife complain, yet be not annoyed— it is her love, not her folly— they are the complaints of fervent attachment, and burning affection, and fear.”

“Yea, though thou see her looking down upon you, and disdaining, and scorning you, yet by your great thoughtfulness for her, by affection, by kindness, you will be able to lay her at your feet.”

And so Chrysostom Christianizes the Aristotelian model which he presupposes. However, others today effectually paganize Christianity, by putting authority and submission at the centre of the union of man and woman rather than love.

I disagree that Chrysostom uses kephale as authority, but rather as soteria, and I find that given his presuppositions, he Christianizes his pagan Greek paradigms.

I do not believe that Chrysostom’s paradigms are appropriate in the 21st century, any more than slavery is. I do say that we need to be extremely careful and actually have some evidence that Paul meant authority when he used the word kephale. I absolutely do not find evidence that kephale meant authority prior to Paul’s writing the epistles and not until long after.

If you are aware of this evidence then perhaps you would point me to it.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 1:33 pm

John,

We have cross-posted. Of course, separate domains of authority is one appropriate model in my view, not the best, and subject to abuse. In the authority-submission model, undiluted, the wife has no authority, even over vegetables. Don’t laugh, John, yes, I am making this funny. But what do you want me to do, tell some other stories that would make us all cry.

What I protest the most is that you propose that treating kephale as a metaphor and not looking at “soure” vs “authority” is an “advance.” An advance on whom, I would ask.

You also suggest that someone is being “dishonest” but I don’t know who.

You use loaded language without quotes. I use loaded language with quotes.

My problem is that the teachings themselves cause real misery. Total misery. The teachings of ideological complementarianism is dangerous to the physical health of men and women.

Thank you, Dana, for confirming what I have read elsewhere.

The teaching that men and women reflect the image of God in that the husband reflects the authority of the providing and sending God, and the wife reflects the submission of the sent and dying Christ, needs to be eradicated. Absolutely and totally eradicated.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 2:00 pm

Mary,

I don’t see a difference between asking someone, insofar as they belong to a particular class (wife, child, slave) to submit to someone else insofar as they belong to a particular class (husband, parent, master), and asking someone to recognize someone else’s authority.

It’s no accident, for example, that Peter moves seamlessly from, once again, asking wives to submit – not husbands – to the example of a wife calling her husband “Lord.”

Honesty would be to say flat out: Neither Paul nor Peter say “husbands, submit to their wives,” which is what they would have said if they were upholding an egalitarian template for marriage.

The fact is, they were not upholding an egalitarian template for marriage. They were upholding the culturally given, hierarchically structured template of the society they lived in, with respect to the husband-wife relationship, the master-slave relationship, and the parent-child relationship. At the same time, they gutted those templates of the potential evil that they often entail by asking, for example, men to love their wives as Christ loved the church.

(Of course even then, especially then, Nietzsche would say, and he was no dummy, though he was a bit unstable, patriarchy is subject to abuse. But this isn’t an argument about what framework is more dysfunctional in practice, inclined to break down altogether, or provides, in practice, greater opportunity for abuse. Or, if it is, one might look at how the Bible treats systems of government as an analogy. For example, Samuel didn’t have anything good to say about monarchy, but God accedes to the people’s request, and promises to bless them through it. The Bible is full of promises that God will bless through patriarchy as well. But that is still not the same thing as saying that we should throw away democracy, and return to monarchy, or throw away egalitarianism, and return to patriarchy. On the other hand, we should not think too highly of either democracy or egalitarianism, as if the Gospel entails them. It did not, it does not, and it will not.)

Now, I’m fine with someone saying: the culturally given templates we take for granted today are different from the ones Paul and Peter took for granted. Since, like Paul, our first goal is to see people accept God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ, we need to be all things to all people in our day, and therefore we will now take the egalitarian template as our point of departure, and try to Christianize that as Paula and Peter tried to Christianize patriarchy. The Christian content will be the same: the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love) and a healthy exercise of authority which will also involve honoring and shaming people as the circumstances require (I don’t actually expect you to agree with me that we need to learn to shame people again, unless it is for “universally” recognized sins like racism and homophobia, but I throw this detail into the discussion to make sure that you aren’t lulled into thinking that I am a happy-go-lucky egal, which I’m not).

Now, Sarah Sumners does not take this route. A scholar both Sarah and I treasure, Mary Stewart van Leeuwen, on the other hand, is very capable of thinking historically about theology and the construction of gender roles (watch for her forthcoming about C. S. Lewis and his journey in this respect).

Instead, she does what responsible theologians are very good at: she interprets, as you do, one scripture in light of another. She opts for continuing the Pauline and Petrine tradition of giving gender-differentiated advice to husbands and wives.

Now, I call this honest exegesis. I’m not asking you to follow suit. But I would think it a step forward for an egal to admit that (1) Sumner is faithful to the total witness of scripture in her exegesis; not least of all, because (2) she puts first things first (the theological virtues).

If you can turn a comp into an egal without destroying their enthusiasm for Christ and his Word, be my guest. I say the same to comps. Scarred comps, no less than scarred egals, are the first to benefit from the fact that there is more than one framework available in which one can live out the Christian faith in a positive, life-affirming way.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 2:10 pm

Now, I call this honest exegesis. I’m not asking you to follow suit.

John, you constantly throw these kinds of phrases at people without any evidence.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 2:26 pm

Dana,

thanks for many wise observations. I have many RC and EO friends, men and women, who do not see the exclusion of women from the office of presbyter as a deal-breaker. Some of them are pained about it, even very much, but everyone is willing to leave it up to the Holy Spirit, who may or may not give us a task in preparation for a future as yet unrevealed.

Even though I am happy to be part of a tradition in which women can be presbyters, and I see God blessing many people (and me) through them, I also see God blessing people in marvelous ways through arrangements and patterns specific to RCism and EOxy, arrangements and hierarchies and abstinences (like vows of chastity and poverty) Prots are clueless about, perfectly clueless.

I recently officiated at a wedding in which the bride was an EO turned evProt. I enjoyed so much integrating the “crown of martyrdom” teaching into the wedding ceremony, as well as the “king and queen” motif co-natural to Judaism as well. Her grandma, who remains EO, gave me a smooch of a look in response I treasure to this day.

In Friuli, Italy, where I served as a pastor, a term of affection used in marriage is that of calling the other ‘mia crucis’ – my cross: that kind of earthiness is possible, perhaps, if and only if people really accept that their marriage vows are unbreakable. No, I don’t mean in an absolute, absolute sense, only in an absolute sense, if you get my meaning.

Comment by molly

July 5, 2008 @ 2:51 pm

Interesting conversation.

John, you’ve been repeatedly saying things like,
“Egal families need to move beyond the outright rejection of the exercise of authority to a wise and routinized use of it.”

To me, it sounds like you are relegating “egalitarianism” more with the cultural non-hierarchal status quo for relationships, versus a Biblically derived way of relating. Whereas to me, egalitarianism (the idea that one spouse is not over the other spouse in a predetermined gender hierarchy) comes from a Biblically-derived deeply thought-out place. Egalitarianism means mutual submission, mutual respect, mutual nurture, etc.

Mutual submission exists based on concepts of authority, obedience, and submission (something you have said egalitarians do not like, which again, I suggest comes from defining egalitarianism as if it’s the same thing as the current cultural status quo versus a deeply thought out Biblical paradigm).

Mutual submission means that one party is usually submitting to another party at any given moment. It’s just that instead of making it *always* the female submitting, in an egalitarian setting the submitting depends on an authority/submission structure that both parties have agreed upon.

This year, for example, my husband is “in charge” of homeschooling our five kids. This means I submit to his choice of curriculum, activities, etc. We’ve decided together that he will be the one in authority in those matters. Last year I was the one in authority over those matters. That’s not to say there isn’t discussion and advice asked both ways. But one of us is fully given to the task, and the other comes in more as a support role. Every year, we rethink it and make a mutual decision based on what appears best for our family life that year.

So for me, true egalitarianism does not shy away from authority and submission, but practices those two things OUTSIDE the boundaries of predetermined gender hierarchy. True egalitarianism is *not* the same thing as the non-hierarchal cultural status quo.

Warmly,
Molly

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 2:51 pm

Suzanne,

if you wish to show that Sarah Sumner’s exegesis of Ephesians 5 is less than honest, be my guest. I humbly wait for your proofs. You are welcome to work off of my summaries; Sarah had no objections to them.

I do have a honesty test for egals in relation to Paul and Peter’s teaching on the issues we have been discussing. I have one for comps, too, but I only reveal that one to egals after they have taken the egal test and have cussed me out thoroughly as a result. Of course, it takes a degree of arrogance, and a sense of humor, to administer such tests. I only pop the questions to those who ask for them. Are you asking?

I would like to point out that Chrysostom supported the exercise of authority of the husband over the wife so long as it did not degenerate into authentein as he uses the term: domineering. That has always been the trick within a authority-submission template: how to be lord without lording it over someone. This is why a Christianization of patriarchy inevitably involves a servant, or Christlike, use of authority as its touchstone. But you, because you reject patriarchy root and branch, reject this move.

I have never found it productive to argue this point with true blue egals who are not used to thinking about Scripture historically. Indeed, it would be tasteless on my part to argue the point with you, given what you have been through as you have recounted online.

Still, I wonder if you might admit that nevertheless, just this sort of move is at the heart of Paul’s gender-differentiated exhortation in Ephesians 5.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 3:04 pm

John,

You wrote this on the basis of your own knowledge of Greek.

“It becomes clear that the concept of ’source’ was heard by mother-tongue exegetes, but so was the concept of ‘authority.’”

All I am asking is that you defend it. I don’t want to argue with Sumners book or your summaries, because I don’t know where she ends and you begin. Let me ask again, what evidence do you have that kehpale entailed authority either before Paul or after Paul?

Still, I wonder if you might admit that nevertheless, just this sort of move is at the heart of Paul’s gender-differentiated exhortation in Ephesians 5.

That is one interpretation. I am holding out on my interpretation until I can get some basic vocabulary nailed down. I have invited you to dialogue on this.

Overall, I don’t find your treatment of kehpale or authority and submission convincing.

Women in the priesthood is not a deal-breaker for me. It is the total authority of the male and the total deprivation of authority for the female, which creates an environment that is better for dogs and fish. Even a cat won’t touch it.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 3:07 pm

What I really meant was that it is better for vegetables.

Comment by tiro

July 5, 2008 @ 3:09 pm

86914 John writes,
“In short, Sarah Sumner’s defense of the servant-leader model of being a husband is not in contradiction with Ephesians 5, and in line with the total witness of the Scripture.”

The problem begins with the idea that a husband is a leader to his wife. It’s a simple word used a fair amount in the NT, but it’s never used of husbands. So why do we think we can insert the idea into “head of”. Also, this encourages the idea of wives as followers, which is also never used of women in the NT. So why does anyone think that they can insert that into the use of “body of”.

Part of the problem of understanding the Biblical meaning of upotassomai is that it isn’t about a wife’s RESPONSE to what a husband might ask. That is only a fringe area. The primary meaning of (upotassomai) arranging of oneself under another, is to so arrange one’s attitude and actions so as to support the well being of the other, at all times and in everything. This is not dependent upon waiting for a husband to ask or demand something. And one’s response to his requests and demands should ALSO remain within the primary meaning of arranging one’s attitude and actions to support the husband’s well being. Sometimes, husband’s ask things that demean themselves, the marriage, and the wife. A wise woman will seek God for a more appropriate response other than unthinking compliance.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 3:28 pm

Molly,

first of all, hats off to you and your husband for the way you do things. I think the label you give it is perfectly defensible: a deeply-thought-out biblical egalitarianism. Of course, I’m not saying that your way is without problems of its own. Nor are you.

What I am saying is that, as far as I can tell, you have one-upped Paul by doing without the gender-differentiated exhortation he offers in Ephesians 5. You have re-written the passage in your flesh such that 5:25 now also reads,

“Wives, love your husbands, just as Christ loved the church,” and 5:24 now also reads, “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also husbands should submit to their wives in everything.”

It takes a real man, and a very good man, to accept the last revision, and, as Flannery O’Connor wrote, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” So this teaching is not for everyone. But a real man, in an egalitarian cultural setting, ought to be able to accept it, confident that in so doing, he will loving his wife as Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her.

This is what I imagine Paul to be saying from heaven (meanwhile, Tertullian and his ilk look on from purgatory): “That’s smart of you, Molly. I needed to give differentiated advice to husbands and wives within the historical and cultural setting I worked in, and to which God accommodated his revelation in my day. You are doing likewise in your day. I’m not going to let you know already which of the two frameworks, which coexist in your day, is truer, ultimately to the Gospel, or more conducive to its flourishing. I didn’t get to know that in my day, though I wondered about it now and then, when I saw that Phoebe was, after all, a better preacher than I was, and after God had me say, in Christ there is neither male nor female.”

In short, I don’t think it’s wise for anyone, comps, egals, compegals, to look at the great set of cards they have in their hand, how biblically true they are, and then rest on their laurels (I’m not suggesting you are). Whichever framework you choose to live out your married life, the hard work begins after the choice has been made. And the hard work is the same in all frameworks.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 3:44 pm

Suzanne,

you say: It is the total authority of the male and the total deprivation of authority for the female, which creates an environment that is better for dogs and fish. Even a cat won’t touch it.

Can’t argue with that. For the version of compism you describe, “vegetable” is too weak an adjective. “Pornographic” comes to mind.

But I see and hear about a lot of young men and women turning to comp liteism for a framework. Especially when I talk to friends in campus ministry. Which is not what you are talking about.

It’s not that surprising, really, if they come from broken homes (I do), in which egalitarianism as a framework made it easier, not harder, for their parents to give up on an unhappy or unsatisfying marriage and find greener pastures.

There are also the scarred children of egals who come uninvited to my confirmation classes and join the church against their parents’ wishes, parents whose egalism consisted in their belief that they could be equally mean to each other, and are now on their second, third, or fourth “try.”

So the children of these very egalitarian relationships look for a model of marriage with more structure, clearer lines of authority. Can you blame them?

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 4:10 pm

Suzanne,

but I have never presented my views on the issues at hand except in terms of comments on the views of others, such as Sarah and Jim Sumner, Carolyn Osiek, Bonnie Thurston, Andrew Lincoln, and Mary Stewart van Leeuwen. I understand why you might want to disregard their take and their research on the issues and concentrate on my stray comments. It is hard work to plough through their work, except that of Sarah and Jim Sumner, who write at a popular level.

My comments, divorced from the conclusions of the research of these heavy hitters, are necessarily unconvincing. As I did in my posts, I do now: I recommend their work, the bibliography I provide. Ultimately, you will want to measure your reflections against theirs, not mine.

Furthermore, it’s fine with me if you haven’t made up your mind yet on the overall sense of passages like Ephesians 5, 1 Peter 3, and 1 Tim 2. Most of us do not have that luxury. We have working hypotheses, and we go with them. Perhaps you have a working hypothesis or two yourself.

It does seem that you think that no one has gotten these things right yet. Here I differ with you completely. For example, my understanding of the household codes, including the part that concerns the husband-wife relationship, works within a broad scholarly consensus.

That doesn’t mean it is necessarily right. But it does mean that when you say that my take on “kephale and authority is not convincing,” your wording itself suggests that you have yet to even frame the question in a way that scholars outside of the hothouse egal-comp debate would accept as helpful and constructive. So long as you frame your questions in ways that are conducive to scoring points for your side, you will not go far. Not far at all.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 4:28 pm

Tiro,

I think most of your individual points stand up to critical scrutiny, but do not amount to substantive criticism of Sumner’s position.

Your most questionable move is to etymologize the meaning of the verb upotassomai, as if that solved anything. It does not. Instead, one must look at usage and context. In terms of usage and context, this verb is what one expects in household codes in which one side of a bilateral relationship (wife-husband, child-parent; slave-master) is expected to submit, and the other to exercise authority.

It’s not that hard to grasp this. But it hurts, right? It still hurts me a bit. I grew up in Madison WI, the Berkeley of the Midwest, and I’m still inclined to think that the well-adjusted egalitarian culture I absorbed from the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper is the beautiful truth, period. Full stop. How dare God accommodate his revelation to cultural norms at variance with the ones I grew up with in Madison! Jesus should have been born in Madison or Berkeley, and if that couldn’t be arranged, at least Paul should have. If the weather wasn’t so bad, Vancouver would have made an excellent choice, I’m sure others will point out.

It’s not upotassomai that’s odd here (except for us). It’s agapein. That’s what’s new, and sent eyebrows furling.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 5:02 pm

John,

There is no difference in the divorce rate of egalitarians and complementarians, that can be identified. Once again you are making cross generational comparisons that do not hold. Broken homes are not the domain of egalitarians, nor are they caused by egalitarian women, any more than by any other group of people. Broken homes are what they are and any attempt to pin them on one group or another is not helpful.

It sounds as if you are comparing children from non-Christian homes with those from Christian homes. Not that there is much difference there either as to divorce, but many seek something different from what we has.

John, you are not short on trying to score points yourself, and you engage on that level all the time on your blog. You revel in it. You throw rotten vegetables all the time, and are a recipient of quite a few also. Somehow, for me, you disallow the throwing of rotten vegetables. I shall arrange to have them discreetly delivered in a basket.

Now down to business. You have not given me any notion at all that kephale means authority.

I will assume for the purposes of this discussion, unless someone provides evidence otherwise, that kephale is exactly that, the kephale of the body.

The church fathers interpreted kephale in 1 Cor. as the arche or aitia, and very specifically not the archon or exousia. God was not the authority over Christ but the one whose nature Christ shares. God is the first cause, the first principle, the one who IS the nature that Christ shares in. Arche cannot be well translated, but there is a sense of being the one from whom everything else derives. Some people have translated this as “source.”

Man is the arche of woman, according to Genesis, and we share a common nature. Christ became the second Adam and so shares his nature with Adam, and representatively, every man. This nature is also shared by women, but it happened by Christ becoming Adam.

In 1 Cor. 11, he word kephale means shared nature, perfect unity and first principle, the arche/aitia.

In Eph. 5, the kephale is the soteria of the body. The Soter, Christ, the saviour, or the soteria, the salvation (health, preservation, and security) of the body. By observation and in cultural terms Paul sees the husband as having this role.

I say this carefully since we have many women who protect and rescue men in the scriptures, Rahab rescues her father and mother and her whole family, Phoebe and Lydia care for Paul, and so on. However, n the standard household, the husband is the preservation or security of the household.

Therefore, Paul outlines within this patriarchal framework the appropriate way for a Christian to behave, assigning Christians to live within the authoritarian framework.

This interpretation is standard. I don’t claim it as new.

However, this contrasts sharply with complementarianism, which teaches that the husband must be the kephale of the wife, and as such he is the God created and designated authority over her. He is the God-given authority in her life. This is so because kephale means “authority.” Some claim that God inspired Paul to write these words to establish the evident and necessary “authority” of the male over the female. Some say, in fact, in creation, God created men for command and women for submission.

You know and I know that they are quoting Aristotle, that women are without authority.

Therefore, I see that the notion that the male has “authority” in creation and the female does not as a watershed issue. There is even a mention somewhere that in heaven we will still be in essence male and female and women will experience eternal functional subordination, because this is what women are created for.

If you have read any insights into kephale that would further this discussion, I would be interested.

So, yes, the epistles teach Christians how to live as Christians within their cultural paradigms. The epistles do not teach that the husband has total and absolute God-given rule of “authority” over the wife, for the simple reason that kephale does not mean authority.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 5:07 pm

It’s not upotassomai that’s odd here (except for us). It’s agapein. That’s what’s new, and sent eyebrows furling.

I beg to differ with you that agapein is new. The Greek household also depended on philia, mutual affection, and I argue a synonym of agape. What is new is the definition of agape as sacrifice.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 5:09 pm

John,

I am not trying to present anything new or different from the standard. I am trying to show you how the complementarianism that I cite, varies in that it is authoritarianism. It is not soteria, but it is unhealthy.

Comment by molly

July 5, 2008 @ 5:09 pm

Whichever framework you choose to live out your married life, the hard work begins after the choice has been made. And the hard work is the same in all frameworks.

John,
Thank you for your thoughts. I wanted to add that I spent 8 years in a hard-complementarian marriage before we left that for what we have today. The hard work is no where near the same, experientially. Today I am allowed to be a full person. Today I can be a full participant in the hard work of two full adults learning to relate together.

Under hard-complementarianism, which I truly believe to be a form of spiritual abuse (no different from the abusive pastor who rules over his flock), I was not.

There is no freedom of choice when you are given a paradigm that says you either submit 100% of the time to your spiritual leader, or you are committing the same sin that Lucifer did when he did not submit to the lower place God gave him.

Perhaps between soft comps and egals there can be a point of discussion, a place of “agreeing to disagree.” After all, the differences between the two paradigms are really very slight in most circumstances.

But hard comps, of whom I’ve been surrounded with all my life and who are seeming to flourish in certain environments, there is no “agreeing to disagree.” They need to be firmly opposed.

I realize you are coming from an environment where comps are few and far between. I think your cautions and encouragement are probably rightly needed there. But please know that some of us are coming at these issues from a very different environment, a very different set of experiences, ones in which we watch real people, including ourselves, suffer terribly under a very flawed paradigm.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 5:11 pm

Oops, unedited mess. “seek something different from what they have.”

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 5:56 pm

Molly,

I concur with your points. I get to see how flawed a paradigm egalitarianism can be in practice, because that’s what is lived out all around me. You have seen and experienced in your own flesh how flawed a paradigm complementarianism can be. Both of us have to be careful not to generalize too much from our own limited experiences. I’ve learned a lot from cross-cultural experiences, in Europe and the Middle East, and among friends from India, in which these matters are seen in ways whose foundations are different again from either egalitarianism or complementarianism as formulated among us.

But it’s important to step back and notice what you have noticed: that soft comps and (soft) egals have a lot in common. So much reconciliation within the body of Christ would be possible if more people were able to recognize that truth.

Indeed, that is why I began posting on this subject, and will continue to post on this subject: with a view towards encouraging reconciliation among soft comps and soft egals.

Comment by tiro

July 5, 2008 @ 6:11 pm

John writes #86962
“Your most questionable move is to etymologize the meaning of the verb upotassomai, as if that solved anything. It does not. Instead, one must look at usage and context. In terms of usage and context, this verb is what one expects in household codes in which one side of a bilateral relationship (wife-husband, child-parent; slave-master) is expected to submit, and the other to exercise authority.”

While the household codes of that era did indeed frame it in the mastered and the master, Paul does not support that frame. There is nothing about authority or leadership in the husband wife relationship that Paul outlines. There is nothing about obedience to the wives or authoritative responsibility over the wife to the man.

The usage and context was a metaphorical interdependent relationship of “head of” and “body of”. The upotassomai was that of respect, honor, mutuality, support, etc. of everyone toward every Christian. This was NOT to stop at the door to our interpersonal relationships for EVEN those that did involve authority and obedience such as parent/child, and master slave.

John writes “I’m still inclined to think that the well-adjusted egalitarian culture I absorbed from the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper is the beautiful truth, period. Full stop.”

I was raised in the cultural norms of patriarchal authoritative male dominance. I accepted it most of my life in spite of the devastation that it wrought in my life and most of the women of my extended family, until Christ began to show me different in Scripture. It wasn’t until I had researched God’s Word that I ever knew there was another choice. So I’m sorry that I cannot relate with your experiences.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 6:12 pm

Suzanne,

it is good to hear you affirm that Paul upholds the framework of his day which was authoritarian in structure, with the husband exercising authority over his wife, though of course, as you say, the authority was not absolute, any more than a parent’s authority over his /her children was absolute, or that of a master was absolute over his/her slave. Furthermore, husbands /parents /masters also had responsibilities vis-a-vis wives /children /slaves, recognized already before Paul, but more greatly emphasized by him than was the norm.

That is what I hear you saying: if not, please correct me. If that is what you are saying, that is more honest and informed than what I hear from many egals.

More later.

Comment by tiro

July 5, 2008 @ 6:13 pm

John writes “and will continue to post on this subject: with a view towards encouraging reconciliation among soft comps and soft egals.”

I appreciate your commitment.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 6:15 pm

John,

I too agree that soft comps and (soft) egals can reconcile. I am just not sure that they have to. Half of my commenters and half of my email seems to be from soft comps. I just don’t see it as that big a problem. Nor do I know whose problem this is.

The problem is hard comp, as taught by certain organizations. You choose to oppose some of us who oppose them. We are confronting them for a very good reason.

On your own blog you write about hupotassomai,

“the verb is what one expects in household codes in which one side of a bilateral relationship (wife-husband, child-parent; slave-master) is expected to submit, and the other to exercise authority.”

Perhaps, but the verb hupotassomai is equally used in relation to fellow Christians one to another in Clement. It is used of a king to his subjects. The word for “submit” does not posit an authority. It is the relationships which do that.

However, Paul’s use of saviour and love are central. He does not work from the innate capacity for command of the male, and the freeborn, but from soteria and agape/philia, also present in Aristotle.

In fact, what Paul introduces into the relationship is sacrifice. The head of the wife, the saviour of the body sacrifices for the sake of the body. This is what Christ and Paul introduce into the paradigm, a turning of the paradigm on end. Yes, it is counter-cultural, counter patriarchy.

Does Paul intend to overturn the social structure. Probably not. But by introducing sacrifice as the role of the head of the body, he does counter the culture of his day.

And head, used nowhere else in the Greek household codes, introduces the notion of organic interdependence, not as some claim “authority”. It serves to know exactly how and when Paul imitates and varies from the vocabulary of Aristotle. It is quite interesting.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 6:24 pm

it is good to hear you affirm that Paul upholds the framework of his day which was authoritarian in structure, with the husband exercising authority over his wife, though of course, as you say, the authority was not absolute

Thanks for listening. Where I disagree with you, John, is

a) in any claim that kephale means “authority” or

b) that Paul says that there is authority over the female given to the male in creation.

I do not believe that kephale or authentein can properly be related to the normal exercise of authority. I do believe that the culture was patriarchal, and that Paul was teaching a counter-cultural mystical understanding of the household as organic, a unity in which the “head” the actual real “head” that sits on top of the body must sacrifice, and seek the best for the body. But he expected people to remain in the relationships that they had already.

This is quite different from teaching that men and women are designed by God, men for authority, and women for submission. If that were true then the man should become entirely the authority, and women entirely the submissive. We are back to vegetables. Some of us don’t want to be vegetables.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 6:37 pm

Frankly, from the narratives, one would have to conlude that Paul really isn’t that hung up on gender, he just wants to show how Christ’s example of sacrifice will hold things together, and demonstrate how the church is the body of Christ. Its better to take a long view and not make the male as decision-maker a gospel issue.

Comment by Lin

July 5, 2008 @ 6:59 pm

“So the children of these very egalitarian relationships look for a model of marriage with more structure, clearer lines of authority. Can you blame them?”

John, these sound more like pagan marriages. What is your definition of an egalitarian from a Christian perspective? Because it sounds to me like you are confusing Christian egalitarianism of mutual submission to a pagan selfish marriage.

(And where is your reference to all the ‘be a servant, don’t lord it over others, etc. scriptures when you speak of inherent authorities?)

On the other hand, I am seeing quite a few couples come out of what it seems is an ever growing
Comp/Patriarchy movement, stunned and numb from all the rules and roles they could never live up to. The CBMW reads more like a Christianized version of the Talmud than scripture.

Since your denomination is more liberal, you probably do not see this as much. Trust me. It is all over the place including the huge mega pastors who make tons of money on this comp teaching with tapes, seminars and books.

The doctrine of the Holy Priesthood is gone in these churches.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 7:04 pm

το γαρ αρχειν και αρχεσθαι ου μονον των αναγκαιων αλλα και των συμφεροντων εστι, και ευθυς εκ γενετης ενια διεστηκε τα μεν επι το αρχεσθαι τα δ’επι το αρχειν.

Ruling and being ruled are conditions not only inevitable but also expedient. In some cases things are marked out from the moment of birth to rule or be ruled. Politics I ii 6 – 9

That’s what I wanted to say. Either Christianity is distinguishable from this or it is not.

Comment by Gem

July 5, 2008 @ 8:02 pm

John said in 86947

It’s no accident, for example, that Peter moves seamlessly from, once again, asking wives to submit – not husbands – to the example of a wife calling her husband “Lord.”

Did you know that Sarah means ruler? Do you think Peter’s readers knew that? Do you think Peter’s readers knew that Sarah had a great deal of authority in her household? Enough so that when she told her husband that his son must go… “a matter which greatly displeased Abraham”

Abraham had the spiritual integrity to check with God:

Gen 21:10-12 So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; … And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham… But God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased… whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, Abraham… But God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased… whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you,

Exactly how much more authoritative can one get?
All at once she speaks with authority into Abraham’s life, into history, and right into the Word of God in the new covenant:
Gal 4:29-31

I think Peter’s readers knew all that.

I also see that the instructions of 1 Peter 3:1-6 are directed exclusively to wives. In other words, no male is given any authority by Peter to interpret those instructions for wives. WIVES are trusted by Peter and by GOD to figure out for themselves what was meant by the instructions given to them. WIVES with Scriptures and prayer (and not much education when Peter wrote down those instructions). WIVES who don’t know ancient languages, haven’t read church fathers (and wouldn’t). That GOD HIMSELF trusts a mere female WIFE to read and interpret her own mail speaks volumes. :)

Comment by Gem

July 5, 2008 @ 8:38 pm

86951 I do have a honesty test for egals in relation to Paul and Peter’s teaching on the issues we have been discussing. I have one for comps, too, but I only reveal that one to egals after they have taken the egal test and have cussed me out thoroughly as a result. Of course, it takes a degree of arrogance, and a sense of humor, to administer such tests. I only pop the questions to those who ask for them. Are you asking?

This was addressed to Sue and I don’t consider myself an egal. Still, I’m curious, so I’m asking. (Could someone please post the # if this was already covered?)

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 8:59 pm

Suzanne,

if I were to tell that you that soft comps feel caught in your cross-hairs rather often, what would you say to that? After all, you attack even a typically soft comp concept like “servant-leader.” If even that conjures up for you, Nietzsche-like, images of hard compism, how do you plan to build bridges to the positions of evangelical soft comps?

You also have a tendency to think highly of the Fathers and Chrysostom in particular, so long as no one, an RC or EO, and in the future, an evangelical, wants to follow that template today, with its uneasy both/and understanding of the grounds for the subordination of women (nature and the Fall), and a commitment to the concept of headship in terms of the exercise of loving authority within the context of an hierarchical arrangement. Once again, though most traditionalist RC and EOs out there are, as it were, soft comps, it is not clear to me how you plan to build bridges in that direction either.

You draw a line in the sand whereby anyone who teaches that the subordination of women has a positive aspect that pre-dates the Fall must be anathematized. Obviously, the whole idea that subordination might be a positive thing, to be embraced, is foreign to modernity. Now if you wish to tell me, yes, subordination can be a positive thing, and is a positive thing, in the case of humans vis-a-vis God, children vis-a-vis parents, lay vis-a-vis the bishop, and in many other situations, then the next question is: how about within marriage, between husband and wife?

In principle, soft comps and soft egals answer the last question differently. In practice, probably, not so much (see Dana’s remarks above). But if you continue to berate soft comps for answering the question the way they do, from within a framework at odds with your own, that is not a basis for reconciliation.

That someone like Sarah Sumner, who doesn’t self-identify as a comp, and who is labeled as an egal by hard comps, should be greeted by egals interested in reconciliation with anything less than open arms makes the reconciliation of which you speak sound very threatening. It sounds as if the terms of peace you are suing for amount to total capitulation.

Basically, I think when it comes to the household codes, you find it easy to speak about what Paul and Peter exhort the men to do. You are right: there is no difference between your description of the degree of innovativeness in Paul’s teaching (some, not much, you say), and that of Carolyn Osiek (she only adds that in general, on women’s issues, Paul was following Hellenistic Jewish precedent).

But you do find it difficult to talk about what Paul and Peter exhort wives to do, which is to be submissive to their husbands in all things. Well, duh. That’s because hard comps, in reaction to modern trends that drive them crazy, are piggybacking on that in order to argue for outrageous applications. Which brings us to vegetable comps. I really like that moniker. I have some SBC friends I will now ask, just to keep them honest: I know you are a comp, but are you a vegetable comp?

You have a very hard sell if you wish to claim that the kephale-soma metaphor in Ephesians 5 does not ground Paul’s exhortation to wives to be submissive to their husbands “as to the Lord” and “in all things.” It clearly does. You’ve read tons of Greek just as I have: you can parse the syntax of 5:21-24 w/o difficulty. And you probably also know what submission might mean in practice to a Roman or Greek husband, particularly if they were an unbeliever (to whom Peter specifically exhorts submission). Augustine has a heart-rending account of what it was like in his eulogy for his mother Monica.

(You can repeat as often as you want that kephale doesn’t mean “authority” but “just” means “head,” but that changes nothing of what I just said. Nor do I expect you to buy the idea that upotassomai in Eph 5 means anything other than what it always means in reference to parent/child, master/slave, and husband/wife relationships in Greco-Roman antiquity.)

None of this was pretty, anymore than it was pretty being a slave to a master in the Greco-Roman world, even a Christian master. But honesty requires that we recognize that that is what we have here. And if you think not, you make a woman like Augustine’s mother Monica into a birdbrain who understood not even the first thing of what her religious tradition expected of her. No one, I submit, can read about what Monica put up with, did, and willingly endured without a good cry. If Augustine had not become a Christian after having had a mother like Monica, he would have been the worst of all imaginable men.

Now what does Sarah Sumner add to this, and Chrysostom before her? They draw out all the “relevant” implications of the kephale /soma metaphor in exegeting Ephesians 5, with “relevance” defined by a canonical hermeneutic that put into play the entire witness of Holy Scripture against the backdrop of the good in their culture as they understood it.

That is the way Christians have always exegeted scripture. It allows an individual text to say more than it does on its own. It is the correct way to limn a biblical text within the Christian tradition. Not on the basis of experience (not that that should ever be necessary in the first place: the Bible contains within its pages a microcosm of all human experience, for those who know it well); not on the basis of later tradition (well, Christians actually differ among themselves on this point); and not on the basis of an appeal to reason or a specific cultural practice we are familiar with, however enlightened we think it might be.

Finally, I must object to your either/or approach to Aristotle and the gospel. Put it this way: if that is really the ways things are, you must throw away as sub-Christian much or even all of what we find in patristic tradition and beyond, including, of course, the great Thomas and all who followed in his via.

You know full well, I imagine, that Luther didn’t do what you’re suggesting either. But others in our day certainly have. You would not be the first to do so. I would point out, however, that all those I know of who felt this opposition to be at the heart of things are no longer Christians at all. They have, on their own understanding, ridded themselves of the religion of slaves.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 9:08 pm

Lin,

thank you for your remarks. I don’t doubt that the Comp/Patriarchy movement as you call it is ever-growing: I see what an empty alternative egalitarianism provides every day. You wish to characterize Hollywood’s approach to marriage and sexuality as pagan: I couldn’t agree more. I note with resignation that an ever-growing number of lukewarm Christians buy into that pagan model before our eyes.

Since my congregation, like many mainline congregations, is made up mostly of sincere soft comp and soft egal believers on the verge of becoming lukewarm Christians, or already there, the chief threat to their spiritual well being does not come from vegetable or porno comps, but from porno egals as in Swingtown.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 9:21 pm

GEM,

I like very much how you handle 1 Peter 3. You engage in a kind of canonical exegesis whereby you limn it based on the total witness of Scripture. This is a perfectly legitimate move. That comes with the territory once we call 1 Peter no longer an occasional letter to so-and-so once upon a time, but something written for us. Don’t let anyone ever tell you differently.

For the record, however, we know for a fact that Christians in the first centuries, in which the submission of wives to unbelieving husbands was a huge issue, and its successful accomplishment despite the endurance of much abuse a chief cause of the triumph of the gospel among the heathen, did not read it all in this way. You can read commentary after commentary on 1 Peter from the first centuries and discover that no one read the text the way you do. They had other fish to fry.

I don’t mean this as a criticism. It’s just a fact that a biblical text can and should be read in different ways depending on context. Actually, there still are Christian wives married to unbelieving husbands who follow 1 Peter 3 to the letter, and I would never wish to diminish the value of their witness to the power of the Gospel, nor, I imagine, would you.

Comment by tiro

July 5, 2008 @ 10:04 pm

John, since you categorize “servant leader” as soft comp, I wonder if you would define the parameters of it. Does it include the husband as having final say in decisions, and are decision primarily the husbands department. Are finances primarily the responsibility of the husband in your estimation. In what way exactly do you think a “servant leader” husband, leads his wife.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 10:37 pm

Hi Tiro,

those are good questions. Since I am not a soft comp, I’m not the best person to answer the question. I am an egal, so in my marriage, we get to haggle about every major purchase with no one guaranteed to have the final say in advance. It can be exhausting.

I have noticed that soft comps in the Ev Free tradition I know understand it to mean that, if she is the one good at keeping the books and deciding when to make a big purchase, the servant leader defers to her. The devil in me has always wanted to say, “But Frank, that means your authority is that of a figurehead only; c’mon, shouldn’t you get to decide when to buy the HDTV?” but I’ve never actually been so mean as to say that in real life. Plus, it would not be quite fair. There really is no contradiction between being a servant leader and deferring to the one in the family who is best qualified to do something or decide something.

Now, someone will reply, that set-up is subject to abuse. What if the fearless servant leader is a numbskull, and doesn’t understand who is most qualified to do or decide something? What if he is plain wicked?

I don’t deny any of this. Furthermore, I am perfectly aware of how I manipulate the same principle to my advantage in an egal set-up. Thus, my oldest son gets to set up all the electronics and maintain the computers, even though I could at least do part of it almost as well as he could. But I prefer to lean on him and do other less tiresome things. Plus, he hasn’t learned to say no yet.

My point is: the differences between soft egalism and soft compism are just not that great in practice. Many others have made the same point in this thread. Both set-ups are subject to abuse because that’s what human beings do very well. On the other hand, both set ups work tolerably well if the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love) are the basis of word and deed.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 10:43 pm

Honesty Test for Egals

(1) If the verse that says, “wives, submit to your husbands in everything” didn’t actually appear in Scripture, would you want it to be a part of Scripture?

(2) If a preacher said a knucklehead thing like “women will be saved through childbearing,” would you not be disgusted?

(3)If a preacher told the women of his church that they must be submissive to their godless husbands and call them “Lord,” would you consider him wacked?

(4)Do you believe that things like slavery, non-egalitarian marriages, and taking the rod to a youngster, are simply wrong, even though such things have been countenanced by Christians in many times and places?

For the record, I answer:

(1)No, I would not want it part of Scripture, even though it’s right there in Eph 5.

(2) I would be disgusted, and yes, I know it’s found in 1 Tim 2.

(3) I would consider him wacked, though I think I understand why we find something very much like that in 1 Pet 3.

(4) Actually, I don’t think the listed things are simply wrong. I realize that by so answering, I am not a hard egal.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 11:21 pm

I am sorry John, but I consider your comments to me to be innapropriate and factually careless. Thanks for the chat.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 11:30 pm

I would like to state here that anything said about me without a quote to prove that it is true, is not likely to be true.

Comment by Mary

July 6, 2008 @ 6:24 am

As I thought, John: the demand for an explicit, class-limited command you and Sumner demand in order to accept that husbands are to submit themselves to their wives — thereby obeying Eph. 5:21 (where “submit yourselves” actually occurs), somehow just evaporates when it comes to needing one in order to say that husbands are to be authorities over their wives. That’s a double-standard, John. (Or are you still hunting for that explicit, class-limited command?) (smile)

I’m also still looking for even a credible hint that “servant leader,” that religiously-popular but unscriptural buzzword, is in any way an acceptable way to understand KEPHALE. Actually, *I’m* not looking for it, not anymore. There isn’t one.

No, Paul wasn’t a zealot bent on overthrowing the cultural injustices of his world. Rather, he gives those willing to recognize them, a “blueprint” for transforming those sinful paradigms in which we all must live (21st-century Christians no less than first) through living the example of Jesus Christ. Christ, of course, gave himself up even to death on a cross, for the sake of us mortals. How often did he remind his followers that we must all do the same in order to follow him? Setting oneself up as an authority figure over one’s spouse — one’s brother or sister in Christ — is NOT giving oneself up! Sure, we can settle for the worldly, sinful ways of historical patriarchy. But there is a more excellent way.

THAT is the pattern in Scripture that we are to emulate. First-century Greco-Roman patriarchal structures for marriage are not a part of it; Scripture describes much that we do well not to emulate. It is no wonder that all of the household codes contained within the Epistles are startling departures from the secular codes of the day. Self-sacrificial Christian love transform the latter into the former. We, who have no such household codes as part of our cultural or legal social fabric, need not and in fact ought not to re-create. The witness of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world is jeopardized when we dare to claim (falsely) that abridging women’s freedom while elevating men’s privilege is a necessary part of that gospel. Sorry, but that is precisely what Christians do when they promote patriarchy as though it is godly.

Comment by John

July 6, 2008 @ 6:55 am

Hi Mary,

I think you will be pleased to see, when Sarah and Jim’s book comes out, that they differ little in substance from you in terms of what to teach about God’s expectations for men and women in marriage.

Furthermore, I think you will also see that their approach is characterized by humility, such that their own approach is not presented as: “it’s my way, or the highway.” With all due respect, it sounds like you want them to give up on the practice of giving gender-differentiated exhortation to men and women in marriage even though I’m sure you realize that

(1) they do so according to the precedent of Scripture
(2) they do so with the theological virtues (faith, hope. and love) firmly in the forefront.

If that still puts their approach beyond the pale for you, I don’t know what to say.

I am also dismayed that their position is characterized as one of supporting patriarchy. If so, that would make Paul and Peter arch-patriarchalists, and it is they, not Sarah and Jim Sumner, that you have your argument with.

Comment by Mary

July 6, 2008 @ 6:57 am

One thing that would go a LONG way toward there being reconciliation between those who embrace biblical equality and those who instead embrace varying degrees of the patriarchy they find described in Scripture, is foregoing accusations of dishonesty and manipulative, contrived tests of honesty. Actual discussion is more fruitful, at least between honest people. And for all the error I find in the exegesis of those who embrace patriarchy as godly, I presuppose honesty despite their error. The same presupposition on their part about egalitarians would be refreshingly welcome.

Comment by Mary

July 6, 2008 @ 7:09 am

What I want from those who say they are egalitarian, John, is for them to at least get their criticisms of egalitarians right. Sumner simply doesn’t.

I don’t care if she tells married women that they must unilaterally bow down and call their husband “Lord” (not saying that she does), but if she wants to be considered an egalitarian, she ought to be more accurate and careful in how she characterizes her fellow egalitarians and what we believe. And she ought to subject her own scholarship to the scrutiny she demands of the others. For example, claiming that Scripture doesn’t provide the basis for egalitarian marriage because there is no specific command for husbands to submit to their wives to reinforce a universal command (Eph. 5:21), is ludicrous. Read in context, we can pretty easily see that Paul instead shows that no matter how much or little worldly power (descriptive) one may have, one is always to submit to one’s fellow believers (prescriptive).

I don’t find that Sumner’s inaccurate, accusatory stone throwing in her recent CT article is at all humble, by the way. Or weren’t people supposed to notice that she ignored a great deal of excellent egalitarian biblical scholarship and invented her charge that all egalitarian scholars say that KEPHALE should always be translated “source”?

There’s more I could say in response, but I do have responsibilities this morning that are calling for my attention. Suffice it to say that you’ve read into (presupposed) my responses thus far, MUCH more than I actually said. From what I can tell, I’m not the only one you’ve done that to, John.

Comment by John

July 6, 2008 @ 8:27 am

Mary,

I’m sorry, once again, to see that Sumner’s attempt to call both sides in the comp-egal debate to greater integrity, is not well-received by you. I am surprised, which is probably a sign that I am a Pollyanna, always expecting things to go better than they actually do.

If Sumner does not succeed in identifying weaknesses in the egal position, perhaps you might do so in her stead. Unless you honestly think that egalism, and egals, are above criticism, and that self-criticism is an intolerable admission of weakness.

I would also say that in a conversation like this, I expect my conversation partners to write in such a way that I am compelled to qualify previously unqualified statement, concede a few points, and bring me to laughter, tears, and even anger. After all, we all care about these things deeply.

Whenever I read more or less into something someone else has said than they would have liked, my hope is that that will become an opportunity for clarification.

I continue to note a sectarian tone. It bewilders me, and makes me respect more than before the hopelessly both/and approach of “the great tradition” (that of the revered theologians of the first centuries, whose teaching and approach remain foundational to EOxy, RCism, and at least the more historically rooted churches of the Reformation).

Comment by Sue

July 6, 2008 @ 9:07 am

I asked yesterday to have something that John said about me withdrawn from the conversation because it was not true. Thanks for doing so. I want it on record that this is one of the reasons that I have withdrawn.

Another reason is that Sumners writes,

“It simply isn’t true that Christ is the “source” of every man—for the actual source of Adam was the dust (Gen. 2:7). Nor was God alone the “source” of Christ, since Christ was born of God and of woman (Gal. 4:4).”

If we are not allowed to discuss the meaning of kephale as it is used in the church fathers, then there is not much left to be said. If this conversation is not to be grounded in citations then I am unable to participate further.

Comment by John

July 6, 2008 @ 10:36 am

Suzanne,

I am content that the offending phrase was removed. That is a civil way to do things, and I may avail myself of the same option in the future w.r.t. mischaracterizations of my views on your part. Henceforth, furthermore, I will be careful to quote you chapter and verse.

You again raise the issue of what kephale means. It seems to me that you have not replied to my objections so far, for example, that the way you frame the question predisposes you to overlook obvious facts about the sense that the kephale-soma metaphor, taken as a whole, has in Ephesians 5.

So I repeat: you have a very hard sell if you wish to claim that the kephale-soma metaphor in Ephesians 5 does not ground Paul’s exhortation to wives to be submissive to their husbands “as to the Lord” and “in all things.” It clearly does. That is the plain sense of the text, and you will find that remarked upon in any number of commentaries ancient and modern.

The syntax of 5:21-24 is parsable w/o difficulty. “Oti” clauses like the one there are nothing unusual in Greek. There is also nothing unusual about the meaning of hupotassomai has in context. In Eph 5 it means what it always means in reference to parent/child, master/slave, and husband/wife relationships in Greco-Roman antiquity. Nothing pretty about it, I admit. I would be the last to suggest that it was a hoot to be a wife to a Greek or Roman husband, or a slave to a Greek or Roman master, or a child to a Greek or Roman parent. Even if the authority figure in question was Christian. But there we have it. It’s no use pretending otherwise.

You asked for an example in which kephale(-soma) used as a metaphor vehiculates an assignment of classes of people (husbands and wives) to slots within an authoritarian framework. You have it right in front of you: in Ephesians 5.

You admit as much when you quote Chrysostom favorably (or so I thought):

“[Paul] assign[s] to each their proper place, to the one that of authority and forethought, to the other that of submission.”

Or, in your own words:

Paul outlines within this patriarchal framework the appropriate way for a Christian to behave, assigning Christians to live within the authoritarian framework.

The strengths of this statement of yours are many. First of all, you locate meaning on the discourse level, not on the word level, or – more foolish still – at the level of one item in a complex metaphor.

Secondly, you, who reject patriarchy root and branch, nevertheless affirm that Paul works within a patriarchal framework, and exhorts Christians to live within that “authoritarian” framework. That’s honesty, and believe me, I will quote you appreciatively in response in the future.

But if what you say is true, and I don’t doubt that it is, on one level, it doesn’t matter any longer what particular implications Paul may have had in mind when he used the kephale-soma metaphor in Ephesians, other than the implication he himself explicitly draws, which is that wives are to submit to their husbands in everything.

On other level, it does matter, because a canonical exegete will then milk the metaphor for all its worth in the light of the global witness of Scripture and according to his or her best lights in terms of how the Gospel is to be accommodated to contemporary culture.

Chrysostom does so in one way, and never stops being a hierarchicalist and patriarchalist in the process. Sarah Sumner does so in another way, and never stops supporting a number of things that would have horrified Chrysostom, such as women in the pulpit and an extremely soft differentiation of roles within marriage, soft as a teddy bear really. Both qualify Paul’s exhortation christologically to the nth degree.

Now, what is your complaint against Sumner? That she’s not convinced that one possible undeveloped implication – among many – of the kephale-soma metaphor in Ephesians 5, that of “source,” is helpful in the larger theological scheme of things? Please. Many self-identifying egals don’t think kephale vehiculates the source idea either.

Talk about quibbling. Is this any way to claim common ground? It’s as if you want to frog-march us into agreement with your particular take on the potential implications of the metaphor in question. You are making a mountain out of a molehill.

Comment by tiro

July 6, 2008 @ 10:47 am

John wrote somewhere: “Honesty would be to say flat out: Neither Paul nor Peter say “husbands, submit to their wives,” which is what they would have said if they were upholding an egalitarian template for marriage.

Actually both Paul and Peter admonish fellow Christians to submit one to another. Honesty would note that that includes every aspect of life, including husbands and wives. I really do not get why hierarchalists want to claim that because there wan’t an additional word specifically to husbands that they should be exempt. The only thing that suggests itself is that they are trying to protect special privileges they have given to themselves. Scripture hasn’t done so.

Comment by tiro

July 6, 2008 @ 10:53 am

John writes: “I continue to note a sectarian tone.”

Are you referring to your constant erroneous claim that the early church fathers and all of church history holds to your view? Otherwise, I don’t know what you are referring to.

The people on this Blog are deeply devoted to researching all of Holy Scripture to the end of rightly dividing it so as to reveal the truths that we all are to live by.

Comment by molly

July 6, 2008 @ 11:05 am

It’s as if you want to frog-march us into agreement with your particular take on the potential implications of the metaphor in question.

John,
I’m quoting one statement out of MANY. You call egals out for not engaging in civil discussion and claim that you are taking the high ground, but your choice of words often makes for a difficult environment in which to have civil discussion. You continually make the discussion personal and use ridicule regularly. I was hoping for something different here. I’m interested, just wincing a lot. If your position is truly the moral high ground in the comp/egal debate, then engage with the arguments, please, and stop shaming/ridiculing the people.

Comment by tiro

July 6, 2008 @ 11:17 am

Well said Molly.

John you must know that you are hurting people with your words. Is it your premise to win at all costs? Does getting people to abstain from discussion because of your verbal barbs, read as winning to you?

Comment by tiro

July 6, 2008 @ 11:48 am

John writes: “So I repeat: you have a very hard sell if you wish to claim that the kephale-soma metaphor in Ephesians 5 does not ground Paul’s exhortation to wives to be submissive to their husbands “as to the Lord” and “in all things.””

The question is what does that mean. Patriarchalists claim that it means slavic obedience to whatever the husband says as his wife’s “leader/master”, because after all Christ is also Lord of all.

Yet in Luke 2:48-49 we see that Christ was submissive to his parents and he corrected them and did not conform to their demands.

Sue on her Bookshelf Blog has shown very extensively that upotasso has a wide range of meanings and is not limited to only submitting to authority.

But our problem is with upotassomai in Eph. 5, in a form that is self instigated and not in response to the demands or requests from others. Paul does not admonish Christians to respond appropriately to everyone else’s demands in Eph. 5:21. Paul does not tell wives to respond appropriately to their husbands requests. What Paul does say is that we all are to arrange ourselves under one another in the fear of the Lord, and that wives are to do this also “in the fear of the Lord” (as unto the Lord) and in all things. Paul concludes this picture by using the word translated respect in verse 33. This should give us a clue that part of this upotassomai is about respect and honor. What it is NOT about is hupakouo (obedience).

Comment by Mary

July 6, 2008 @ 5:56 pm

John said, specifically to me: “I’m sorry, once again, to see that Sumner’s attempt to call both sides in the comp-egal debate to greater integrity, is not well-received by you.”

Not true, and if you wish to be accurate, you will withdraw this statement. I do not object to anyone’s call for integrity on the part of both egalitarians and complementarians. It is Sumner’s own inaccuracies and her misrepresentations of egalitarian scholarship, and her own less than convincing arguments, that I objected to, were you to read more carefully what I actually wrote.

I invite you to interact with my statements, if you wish, and to refrain from further misstatements and flawed perceptions of what I meant by my statements. I consider such things matters of integrity in discussion.

Comment by Mary

July 6, 2008 @ 6:17 pm

John also wrote, specifically to me: “If Sumner does not succeed in identifying weaknesses in the egal position, perhaps you might do so in her stead. Unless you honestly think that egalism, and egals, are above criticism, and that self-criticism is an intolerable admission of weakness.”

I might identify weakness in the egalitarian position, if I chose to and if I honestly believe that there are weaknesses in it, yes, of course. At this point, I am continuing to object to Sumner identifying as weaknesses, points that are not common to egalitarian scholarship, but are instead strawmen commonly raised by pro-patriarchy writers when they trash biblical equality.

But you have set up another false premise here, that if I do not choose to indentify — or do not recognize — weaknesses in actual egalitarian scholarship (and please note that I am not saying which of those is my reason for not at this point identifying any such weaknesses), I necessarily “think that egalism, and egals, are above criticism, and that self-criticism is an intolerable admission of weakness.”

Your presumption of knowing what I “must” think is false, badly reasoned, and comes across as arrogant on your part.

I wonder if you know just how many Christian egalitarians have in the past embraced patriarchy as though it is godly, and have deliberately chosen to embrace biblical equality precisely because it lacks so many of the “weaknesses” inherent in pro-patriarchy teachings. Many of us have tried to be faithful Christians both ways and are convinced that Scripture’s ideal is equality. Humility and integrity might extend more understanding that many egalitarians have paid a high price for rejecting the weaknesses of patriarchy in favor of what we believe to be the more faithful witness of equality in Christ.

This is the blog of Christians FOR Biblical Equality, after all. Those who are members of the organization and/or are in agreement with the excellent scholarship that undergirds the principles promoted here, are not going to be trumpeting all the possible misinterpretations about biblical equality that those who oppose it are already very vocal in expressing. It sounds to me, however, as though you will accept no criticism of Sumner’s published statements (or your own) unless we meet your demand for listing biblical equality’s “weaknesses.” I don’t believe such an expectation on your part — if indeed that is what your quote above is saying; please do clarify if I’ve misunderstood you — is reasonable or conducive to respectful, humble dialog.

Comment by Mary

July 6, 2008 @ 6:31 pm

So if acknowledging AGAIN that Scripture never tells husbands to submit to their wives is what it’s going to take for you to acknowledge that egalitarians are at least as honest as you are, John, then I’ll say it again. No, Scripture does not specifically tell husbands to submit to their wives, either in terms of partial submission or submission “in all things.”

It doesn’t need to. Eph. 5:21 applies to all believers.

By the reasoning that demands a specific command for husbands in order for Eph. 5:21 to apply to them, I could argue that wives are exempt from loving their husbands (Eph. 5:2), since husbands and not wives are commanded to love their spouses (Eph. 5:25) in Scripture. Seriously! There is no command anywhere for wives to love their husbands; therefore, the command in Eph. 5:2 does not apply to wives in the same way that it does to husbands. (You can and ought to rightly think that’s ludicrously bad exegesis. Hence my reasonable objection to Sumner’s exegesis, and your defense of it.)

Comment by Lydia

July 6, 2008 @ 7:29 pm

“Another reason is that Sumners writes,

“It simply isn’t true that Christ is the “source” of every man—for the actual source of Adam was the dust (Gen. 2:7). Nor was God alone the “source” of Christ, since Christ was born of God and of woman (Gal. 4:4).”

This statement is simply silly since she is talking about a Soveriegn God Who uses what HE will for His own purposes..dirt and a young virgin. This one quote does not lend credibility to her book at all even if I agreed with her definition of Kephale. Which I don’t.

Comment by Gem

July 7, 2008 @ 2:33 am

I feel somewhat responsible for provoking this:

86993 One thing that would go a LONG way toward there being reconciliation between those who embrace biblical equality and those who instead embrace varying degrees of the patriarchy they find described in Scripture, is foregoing accusations of dishonesty and manipulative, contrived tests of honesty. Actual discussion is more fruitful, at least between honest people.

by asking to see the test you mentioned:

after they have taken the egal test and have cussed me out thoroughly as a result. Of course, it takes a degree of arrogance, and a sense of humor, to administer such tests. I only pop the questions to those who ask for them. Are you asking?

but I am assuming, John, that you are a man of tough skin (as you have accurately prophesied the reaction). My answers resemble yours, but I believe that one needs to dig much more deeply into Scripture. Scriptural truth is deliberately veiled (John 12:40)

You mentioned Eph 5:24 several times “Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” the word there translated “subject to” means “arrange under” and would more accurately be rendered “support”. “Support” for Christlikeness, never for carnality (or she is failing to be meet help)!!!

And what is a husband “dying to self” and “nourishing and cherishing as his own flesh”? Jesus is the Kephale of the corner, the cornerstone of the building. The cornerstone is the rock which gives the greatest support to the building. If a husband is not laying down his life in such a way, then the marriage does not have a good foundation. I think one could make a case that Eph 5 teaches that a husband has a responsibility to support his wife. So Christian marriage should involve mutual support, teamwork.

That you raise Monica as a role model and in the same comment (85981) wax eloquent about subordination being a “good thing” is interesting. I agree that subordination can be a good thing: when it is mutual and reciprocal. I also agree that “servant leader” is a fine term to describe Jesus’ teaching to all people, not just husbands. I maintain that one can look at any marriage in the church and find out who is “the leader” by observing who is serving and laying down his/her life. The problem in many comp marriages is that the wife is wearing the pants by unilaterally laying down her life, while the husband is on a power trip- taking verses like Eph 4:24 out of context and failing to read and obey his own mail.

I believe revelation is progressive. At the time of Augustine’s mother Monica, what other option was there for her? You mentioned long term marriages in your church. I wonder how many of them are truly satisfying? or did they just grit teeth and endure years of pain? Recently, I have been thinking about the history/progression of marriage and the church (reading a book by Pat Gundry called Heirs Together )

In the beginning, the man and the woman were one- quite literally.
The woman had not yet been taken out of the man
The man and the woman were given dominion over “the fish of the sea, birds of the air, etc” (see Genesis 1:26-28). Note the use of “male and female” and “they” and “them”.
The woman was separated out of the man by a cleft
and then- as man and woman- I believe they experienced deep intense intimacy with each other in the Garden of Eden. They were completely un-self-conscious, naked and unashamed- and that is not just about their bodies- that is about themselves
The fall —->shame, male rule over female
Jesus came to set us free.
In Jesus day women and men
comprehended and apprehended the freedom.
For a little window of time, the tree of life was here in our midst and humanity was reminded of what it is like to literally walk with God in the cool of the day

Quickly the understanding was lost :(

Gundry points out that historically, within a couple hundred years of Christ,church leadership was completely masculinized. Women were viewed as inferior. She quotes some horrendous things said about women by early church fathers. She notes that during the Victorian era- christianity and the church became sentimentalized, feminine, and “prudish” (my word) and to this day church has more women than men.
She provides compelling historical evidence that throughout those eras, marriage was not characterized by much intimacy in general. People did not marry for love nor companionship. They got those needs met outside of marriage.

Here is where I think God is going with all this:

Nowadays people are very transient. There is not much of a sense of community to meet our intimacy needs. Porn use and other addictions are rampant. People USE addictions to try to meet their need for intimacy.

I think GOD allowed this state because GOD wants to bring on a NEW era within the church where marriages are RESTORED to Garden of Eden intimacy the way HE intends; where people look at the church and see marriages which are so attractive and so characterized by Christian love that it draws them to seek the tree of life which feeds that marriage. That kind of marriage can not and will not happen unless the man and the woman are a team- ruling together, not over one another, but over creation- and walking together in intimacy with one another and with God: naked and unashamed (which is about transparency and deliverance from shame and curses).

85981 And you probably also know what submission might mean in practice to a Roman or Greek husband, particularly if they were an unbeliever (to whom Peter specifically exhorts submission). Augustine has a heart-rending account of what it was like in his eulogy for his mother Monica.

(You can repeat as often as you want that kephale doesn’t mean “authority” but “just” means “head,” but that changes nothing of what I just said. Nor do I expect you to buy the idea that upotassomai in Eph 5 means anything other than what it always means in reference to parent/child, master/slave, and husband/wife relationships in Greco-Roman antiquity.)

None of this was pretty, anymore than it was pretty being a slave to a master in the Greco-Roman world, even a Christian master. But honesty requires that we recognize that that is what we have here. And if you think not, you make a woman like Augustine’s mother Monica into a birdbrain who understood not even the first thing of what her religious tradition expected of her. No one, I submit, can read about what Monica put up with, did, and willingly endured without a good cry.

Its time for the crying to end and for Christian marriages to reflect what God teaches, and that does not depend exclusively upon wives. The husband’s call as kephale is foundational to the proper building of the house. “unless the Lord build the house, those who build it labor in vain”. Should he abdicate that role in favor of a carnal power trip, he should not be surprised when the marriage crumbles because- unlike Monica- today’s women have choices (and I consider that progress :) )

Comment by Liz

July 7, 2008 @ 4:30 am

I would agree with Gem as to the worth of Gundry’s book “Heirs Together’. Easily available from CBE bookshop and not that expensive. We always keep one to lend as it’s such good reading.

Would like to add that we now have 42 years or mutual submission which has been worked at as we desire to be more Christlike in our relationship with each other. Decision making is not a chore as was suggested, but an adventure to see where God will lead us together. Biblical equality is far different from the secular use of the word egalitarian.

Comment by Gem

July 7, 2008 @ 7:14 am

OOPS typo “taking verses like Eph 4:24″
should be “…Eph 5:24″

and Heirs Together is available to read online- click here (though I have my own copy. I also bought one for my 23 yo daughter who I regret burdening with the long term role model [millstone!] of a very unbalanced and unhealthy soul killing comp marriage) No I’m not divorced. But I am free. I now recognize my authority to make decisions and run my own life and I recognize that from pressing into God and studying scripture deeply.

Biblical submission is good and right and if one feels trapped and enslaved by it then she is not understanding what it is. It does NOT remove her God given authority! It is an attitude not a removal of the authority to say “no”.

I have a little test too, John:

Please read the following quote and think about it before you scroll down the page.

“. . . every man should be ruler over his own household.”

That quote is from the Bible. I’ll tell you where to find it in a moment. First, I would like you to think about what the quote says . . . Have you heard teaching from books, sermons, and Christian radio that represents this model as God’s Will and Plan for a satisfying, God-honoring, biblical, Christian marriage?

Did you think about the quote? OK, then click on the link to read the verse in context.

“. . . every man should be ruler over his own household”

Now that you have read the verse in context, is it about Christian marriage? What sort of marriage is it about? From the world’s perspective, WHO had all the authority, power, control and WHO had none? How about from God’s perspective? WHO was anointed, appointed, and empowered with spiritual authority “for such a time as this?” Do you see how worldly authority is trivial, and how spiritual authority is powerful – so powerful that even the gates of hell will not prevail against it?

I have done similar studies of Sarah, Abigail, Sapphira, etc. “SUBMISSION” does not remove freedom and self-determination!

As far as reconciling comps and egals, I commend you to our brother Steven Tracy who has been published in Priscilla Papers and in the CBMW Journal. Those are links. However, I submit that challenging abuse is NOT “refusing to submit” (as Tracy labels it in this article) but IS instead a proper exercise of true, godly, powerful biblical submission and lifesaving, redemptive, Christlike wifely “helping” as God intends. An abused wife should support her husband’s recovery and Christlikeness, never his carnality. Any support of carnality by allowing herself to be a weak willed controlled 2 Tim 3:6 (NIV) woman should NOT be mislabeled “submission”!

Comment by John

July 7, 2008 @ 8:26 am

I’m out in the boondocks of northern Wisconsin at the moment at a family reunion, so it’s less than easy to get online.

The vegetable comp story is proving to be quite the hit. “Do you know, honey,” said Tally (four kids, stay-at-home Mom who works as an editor from home), “that I am in non-submission to you if I don’t get you the vegetables you want for dinner?” Ryan (a doctor who has just finished his residency) smiles. “You do like to feed me broccoli all the time, which I don’t like. But I eat it anyway. I guess that makes me a submissive husband.” Tally and her sister Kelly, part of the Colorado contingent, both studied at Azusa Pacific, earned masters’ degrees there, and remember Sarah Sumner with fondness.

Ordinary Christians, in my experience, are often wiser than ideologues of whatever stripe.

Hierarchalists use different words to express different obligations within relationships they understand to be rightly ordered hierarchically. Since we are all hierarchalists in some dimensions of our lives, we all do the same. For example, do we talk about the obligation of parents to obey their children or be submissive to them? Probably not, though if we did, we would not be logically inconsistent. Love for someone else sometimes implies submission and acquiescence to their felt needs and wishes.

But here’s the rub. On other occasions, it implies the opposite.

If an egal points out that someone who views the husband-wife relationship hierarchically ought be to able to recognize that a husband must also submit to his wife out of love for her, an intelligent hierarchalist will reply, “Of course.” But in traditional and neo-traditional marriage arrangements around the world, acquiescence by the husband to the needs and wishes of his wife nevertheless occurs within a context in which the wife is expected to defer to the husband in a variety of culturally determined ways.

At the risk of repeating myself, I suggest once again that what is at issue here is not whose framework is more faithful to Scripture: that of traditionalists, neo-traditionalists, or egals. Questions of honesty and integrity are at stake.

First of all, it needs to be admitted that it is not possible to rule out, on the basis of Scripture, an “authoritarian” or “patriarchal” model of marriage. Paul and Peter uphold that model of marriage, though they qualify it christologically. It is true: I react viscerally to attempts to suggest otherwise. I have spent a great deal of time and energy defending this thesis to fellow-egals, and have mostly emotional scars to show for it.

Online, Suzanne has taken me to task on several occasions in very lengthy exchanges because of my unwillingness to join the anti-ESV crusade and my reluctance to use the Bible to undermine the frameworks dear to traditionalists and neo-traditionalists. I wish it were not so, but my patience sometimes comes to an end. For sure, I don’t think of myself as occupying some sort of moral higher ground – though I definitely react negatively to those I perceive as thinking they occupy higher moral ground. If you are looking for an explanation as to why my comments are rhetorically over-heated at times, that’s it.

Egals who turn to Scripture for ammunition to shoot down traditionalist or neo-traditionalist positions are deeply offended that I meet them at the pass and suggest that they are distorting the biblical witness. It can’t be helped. Here I stand.

The issues for me as an egal are of another order. I am happy to express myself with vulnerability in this regard. I sincerely wish more egals would do likewise. I think it helps clear the air.

There are two reasons why I am an egal. First of all, I am culturally incapable of being a hierarchalist in marriage. Even if I wanted to be a hierarchalist, which I don’t, I would make a hash of it. I don’t have the wisdom in my cultural DNA to make hierarchalism work. If I came from an Indian or Chinese family (for example), and were married to someone from that culture, it might be different.

Secondly – thanks be to God – I don’t think that, upon becoming a Christian, I am supposed to make my marriage into a reenactment of Greco-Roman norms. I know that Paul and Peter upheld those norms and qualified them christologically. I have no issue with that, nor with traditionalists or neo-traditionalists who take somewhat similar norms as their point of departure. But I contend that it is also legitimate to take egalitarian norms as a point of departure and go from there. To do so is compatible with Scripture rightly understood.

I say to comps: if you think otherwise, you are being hopelessly sectarian. You are dividing the body of Christ and you have replaced the gospel, which involves acceptance of forgiveness in Jesus Christ, and replaced it with another. I address egals with the very same words insofar as they seek to leave traditionalists and neo-traditionalists no option but to become egalitarians.

Comment by John

July 7, 2008 @ 8:58 am

Tiro,

you say: Are you referring to your constant erroneous claim that the early church fathers and all of church history holds to your view?

I hardly know where to begin with this statement. Paul and Peter and the early church fathers were what Troeltsch called “love-patriarchalists.” The best exegetes and cultural historians I know of agree.

If you wish to challenge this, you have your work cut out for you. I’m happy to go back and forth on the subject matter. For the moment, I refer you to Suzanne’s observations, which, so far as I can see, do not differ from mine in this regard.

As for my own views, I am an egal. I don’t have a fundamentalist bone in my body. I am the product of a very liberal place: Madison, WI. I grew up and continue to serve in a “liberal” mainline denomination, the United Methodist Church. My wife is a pastor and a better preacher than I am. God blesses her ministry greatly. The jury is still out in mine.

I am the oldest son of a blended family, my mother left my father (who admits he was far from being a good husband and father) for a younger man. When my parents broke up, my father was kicked off the deacon board at the Ev Free church where my parents were members. My mother was allowed to retain her positions of leadership. I don’t know how that makes sense of that in the Ev Free framework, but the decision did not lack spiritual insight. My father also remarried, and became the lone white deacon, and only Republican, in the African-American Baptist church of the woman he married. All four of my parents get along well, and we with them. Us 8 sibs get along fairly well, except I struggle getting along with two of my brothers whose marriages failed and who remain at war with their ex’s and have never forgiven me for not taking their side. I get along much better with my gay brother, who is raising a family of three boys with his partner and who is a better parent than most straight people I know, including myself.

You are now free to psychoanalyze me as you wish. But please: the idea that I am either a traditionalist or neo-traditionalist is laughable.

Comment by John

July 7, 2008 @ 9:48 am

Mary, you say:

At this point, I am continuing to object to Sumner identifying as weaknesses, points that are not common to egalitarian scholarship, but are instead straw men commonly raised by pro-patriarchy writers when they trash biblical equality.

Well, that is good strong language. I like it. But with all due respect, I think you are wrong.

I don’t think it is at all unusual for egals of the “biblical” variety to be in outright denial that Paul and Peter exhort husbands and wives from within a hierarchical, authoritarian framework and that Peter calls on wives to remain within it even if they are married to godless husbands.

The strategems employed to refashion Paul and Peter and the Church Fathers into egalitarians ante litteram are best dispensed with. Let them be who they are.

For our part, in our day, based on the entire witness of scripture, it is legitimate for traditionalists, neo-traditionalists, and egals alike to build on Paul and Peter’s exhortations in more than one way. For some that will mean preserving a traditional concept of marriage; for others, a neo-traditional; for still others, including myself, an egalitarian concept. It is sectarian to suggest otherwise.

You also say:

Humility and integrity might extend more understanding that many egalitarians have paid a high price for rejecting the weaknesses of patriarchy in favor of what we believe to be the more faithful witness of equality in Christ.

I have no difficulty understanding this is at all. Indeed, as a pastor, I have had ex-comps under my care. I have never had anything but respect for their journey, but then, these have been non-ideological ex-comps. They have shown no interest in getting other people to follow their lead, or else.

When we are recovering from damage done to us in one setting, and have moved on to another setting, the responses at our disposal are many. For example, I have a friend who is a recovering Unitarian, now Bahai. She does not lash out at her former faith or at other faiths, but she does regard all other faiths as inferior to hers. As a Christian, I do not always find her pleasant to listen to, but I understand. Another possible response is to regard the setting we once espoused as an incarnation of evil. Still another is to regard it as just not the one that works for me.

ALL of these responses, humanly speaking, are equally understandable and equally acceptable. My point is another: if we read Scripture honestly, Scripture cannot be used to tar and feather patriarchal frameworks in and of themselves. What can be done is to point out things like: vegetable and porno comps do not have a biblical leg to stand on, or: if patriarchy is not qualified very carefully from a christological point of view, it is a killer.

You also say:

It sounds to me, however, as though you will accept no criticism of Sumner’s published statements (or your own) unless we meet your demand for listing biblical equality’s “weaknesses.”

The whole premise of the Christianity Today piece was that comps and egals might begin a conversation by admitting that in defense of their points of view, they have sometimes been unfair to scripture and/or the faith and convictions of others. It seems to me that this kind of conversation is not desired by you. I do not demand it from you, but I certainly do wish it, and ardently, for the sake of the Gospel.

Comment by Gem

July 7, 2008 @ 10:53 am

John I agree with you (#87016) about the need for tranparency/vulnerability and I have enjoyed yours. I have also enjoyed following this thought provoking discussion. :) (thanks to all the articulate interesting posters). I’ll have to read Sumner’s book. Sounds like she and I agree that the truth lies between the “camps”.

“Above all, put on love.” Jesus wants Christians to be known by their love and unity. Among “the works of the flesh”- 17 listed in Gal 5, I was struck by how many of them involve one’s behavior in the midst of disagreement. In cross study of some of the words, I was further struck that Paul said:

1Co 11:19 For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.

- heresy- a body of men following their own tenets, dissensions arising from diversity of opinions and aims

Dissensions “must be”.
The test is how we handle them.
May we each seek to be “approved”- even when we disagree- for the glory of God.
Topics like this are good practice :)

Comment by Gem

July 7, 2008 @ 11:07 am

oops I bracketed the strong’s # and the post dropped it

1Co 11:19 For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.

“heresy” is strong’s # 139

click here to see the strong’s definition at BLB

The context of that verse is communion. In the garden, there was communion. May we journey full circle back to “communion” in marriage and in the church. (Is this the ” great mystery” to which Paul refers in Eph 5:32?)

Comment by Sue

July 7, 2008 @ 11:10 am

John,

Our differences on academic points are not the issue here.

These are the issues.

1. You make the abused wife into an object of ridicule and contempt. You wrote:

“The vegetable comp story is proving to be quite the hit.”

2. You misrepresent me,

“Online, Suzanne has taken me to task on several occasions in very lengthy exchanges because of my unwillingness to join the anti-ESV crusade.”

I have an open stated intent, known to every body, I am sure, of asking CBMW to take down the statement of concern against the TNIV. A complementarian pastor asked me if I could do that. It happens that certain individuals who initiated this statement are the editors of the ESV study Bible. This state of affairs ought, IMO, to be protested.

I asked your concurrence that the editors of the ESV were wrong to make a public statement that the gender language of the TNIV makes it untrustworthy for use in church. I know you endorse the TNIV, but I wanted to discuss the connection to the editors of the ESV. I continue to find the statement of concern against the TNIV deplorable.

I don’t want to discuss this with you here, John, but I want these facts on record.

3. You have misrepresented me to be against Sumners book, when I have not read it, and wished only to disagree with discreet statements you presented. For example, I wished to discuss her assessment of Dr. Grudem’s kephale study in the context of Richard Cervin’s response to Grudem. You simply avoided this.

About Sumner’s book, you wrote,

She rightly points out that the conceptual framework of egalitarianism among contemporary Christians often lies in political liberal thought, not in Scripture or tradition.

And in response, I wrote,

I rightly point out that the conceptual framework of complementarianism among contemporary Christians often lies in political conservative thought and tradition, not in Scripture.

Nowhere have I ever expressed any opinion on Sumner’s work, or an her as a person except to respond to the content of certain statements that she made in an article.

Your continued misrepresentation of my opinions are offensive.

Comment by tiro

July 7, 2008 @ 1:39 pm

John writes, “Paul and Peter and the early church fathers were what Troeltsch called “love-patriarchalists.”

I don’t know what a ‘love patriarchalist’ might be but neither Christ nor Paul ever supported the patriarchalist trends of the time. Everything they did went against the grain of male preferential treatment. Paul overturned the ‘household codes’ without saying so directly with his ‘body of and head of’ metaphor and Christ like sacrificial love. Paul spoke of women leaders and praised them. Christ raised the status of women without ever saying a word by speaking to them, forgiving them, teaching Mary, commissioning the woman at the well, and commissioning Mary to bring the message of his ascension, etc. There are too many instances to list them all.

John writes, “As for my own views, I am an egal.”

Well, you fooled me. I wouldn’t have guessed it by your dialogue.

John write, “I don’t think it is at all unusual for egals of the “biblical” variety to be in outright denial that Paul and Peter exhort husbands and wives from within a hierarchical, authoritarian framework and that Peter calls on wives to remain within it even if they are married to godless husbands.”

Yes, Paul did not outright lamblast the traditional hierarchical marital framework. Rather he destroyed it from within by first admonishing ALL to upotassomai. Then he destroyed the concept of male rulership by admonishing the husbands to sacrifice their lives for their wives, nurturing and protecting her as if she were his own body. To have tried to demand changes where the entire society and legal framework supported male dominance simply would not have worked. Both Christ and Paul well knew that and resorted to wiser ways.

Remember how Paul handled the question of releasing Onesimus from his slavery? And look how long it took Christians world wide to recognize that enforced slavery was not a proper way to treat fellow humans.

Comment by tiro

July 7, 2008 @ 1:44 pm

John writes, “The whole premise of the Christianity Today piece was that comps and egals might begin a conversation by admitting that in defense of their points of view, they have sometimes been unfair to scripture and/or the faith and convictions of others. It seems to me that this kind of conversation is not desired by you. I do not demand it from you, but I certainly do wish it, and ardently, for the sake of the Gospel.”

Perhaps, I missed something but all Sumner appeared to do was accuse ‘fellow’ egals of not knowing how to properly exegete Scripture. Perhaps, she thought she was the only one who knows how. But I cannot agree with her there. It is my conviction that there are far more excellent scholars who support all or most of the concepts of Biblical equality than there are who do not.

Now I CAN certainly agree with the other writer (Don’t remember his name) who suggested that comps have not been fair to the convictions and faith of others. And I can agree that at times egals also have not been fair to the faith and convictions of others.

Comment by tiro

July 7, 2008 @ 1:48 pm

87016 John write, “First of all, it needs to be admitted that it is not possible to rule out, on the basis of Scripture, an “authoritarian” or “patriarchal” model of marriage. Paul and Peter uphold that model of marriage, though they qualify it christologically.”

You cannot say that they uphold it if they destroy it from within, which they do. They are simply wise to not try to force the terminology on traditional molds.

Comment by John

July 7, 2008 @ 1:58 pm

Suzanne,

You say: You make the abused wife into an object of ridicule and contempt.

Not true. The object of ridicule and contempt was the preacher who claimed that a wife is in non-submission because she bought the wrong vegetables for dinner.

You say: You misrepresent me, “Online, Suzanne has taken me to task on several occasions in very lengthy exchanges because of my unwillingness to join the anti-ESV crusade [and other topics].”

Not true. I concur with you that certain criticisms that have been made against TNIV are over the top, factually wrong, and so on. I have also favorably reviewed the work of David Stein with the Contemporary Torah and the quest for gender accuracy in Bible translation. On the hand, I see some biblical egals, yourself included, paying back the ESV in the same miserable coin of baseless generalizations. As translations, both ESV and TNIV have strengths and weaknesses. I do my best to point out both in both. You have another approach. That is where we differ on that matter.

You say: You have misrepresented me to be against Sumner[’]s book.

I am aware that you think Sarah Sumner might make good reading for comps “to her right” (my phrase). For the rest, you have repeatedly taken issue with her core theses, the ones that drive her forthcoming book. In that sense, a very strong sense, you are against her book.

You treat a concept like “servant leader” and gender-differentiated exhortation to husbands and wives as if both were abusive in and of themselves.

I know where you are coming from, and so do many others, because you have made that public. Your bravery is admirable. Of course, that does not mean that you can dish it out to others and expect those “others” not to dish it right back.

As far as I can see, you are, as are most “biblical” egals:

(1) Unwilling to accept the fact that proponents of traditionalist and neo-traditionalist frameworks can appeal to Scripture with just as much correctness as proponents of the egalitarian framework. (Of course, inanities such as vegetable compism do not have a biblical leg to stand on. That is not what I am talking about.)

(2) Committed to a hermeneutic that does not get beyond the grammatical-historical sense of discrete biblical passages. You thus put your train on a track headed for the abyss. If this is your hermeneutic (and if you have another hermeneutic, one which allows you to qualify the sense of one passage in the light of others, you might consider taking a passage like Ephesians 5 and applying it thereto: that’s how I preach on this passage in order to ground the version of egalitarianism I recommend in my ministry), you will perforce get all bent out of shape if a discrete biblical passage doesn’t back up your favorite points but in fact tends in the opposite direction. And guess what? You know as well I do that there are passages that tend in the opposite direction: Eph 5, 1 Pet 3, 1 Tim 2 are prime examples.

Yes, hupotassomai is used in a variety of ways in Greco-Roman antiquity. I don’t expect Tiro to necessarily know this, but I expect you to: we studied under the same professors, we read a ton of Greek: we both know that hupotassomai is the verb used by authors in Greco-Roman antiquity to describe the duty of one side in hierarchically structured arrangements such as master/slave and husband/wife relationships. That’s what we have in the household codes in the New Testament and you know it.

(3) Stunned when a self-identifying egal like myself levels criticisms which, if true, ought to lead to a radical redrawing of the boundaries in the debate between traditionalists, neo-traditionalists, and egalitarians; angered when that self-identifying egal begins by criticizing weaknesses in the approach of his own side in the debate. For that I have been called a Benedict Arnold often enough. But I remain convinced that this is the correct starting point.

Comment by John

July 7, 2008 @ 2:15 pm

Tiro,

I continue to believe that you misread Paul and Peter. They did not destroy patriarchy from within; hierarchically ordered husband/wife, parent/child, master/slave relationships are upheld in their exhortations but qualified from a Christian point of view.

Perhaps you wish to claim that hierarchy makes sense in some contexts but not in others, and that you differ with Greco-Roman culture and neo-traditionalism as to which ones. I would so claim. Tiro, we probably also agree on many of the fine details as well, if your culture is similar to mine (I come from Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon country).

But I am not willing to universalize from my own experience, or suggest that Christians must be egalitarians like me, or else. It’s possible to be a laid-back egalitarian who doesn’t think that everyone else’s approach contradicts scripture (that would be the case if Paul and Peter were preachers of egalitarianism).

Comment by Sue

July 7, 2008 @ 2:33 pm

John,

You completely misinterpreted the vegetable story. It was not a sermon. This is what I wrote,

This means that if the wife cooks a meal and cannot find the required vegetables in the market that day, and has chosen a substitute, she is in a state of non-submission. Please do not make light of my examples.

Back to the vegetable story. It is time that people stop laughing at abuse, psychological or otherwise. It is in very poor taste.

This is what someone else wrote,

One last thing…..the vegetable story is not unrealistic. This sort of thing happens among families where ‘headship’ is taken very seriously and we have been involved with couples who live like this.

We are not talking about sermons. We are talking about real life. Which you find very funny. It is damaging and painful that a lot of women live like this. I am not speaking about myself but other women I know.

On the TNIV and ESV.

You write,

As translations, both ESV and TNIV have strengths and weaknesses. I do my best to point out both in both/

My argument is that the ESV editors have made an official and inaccurate statement against the TNIV that it is untrustworthy. I point out that the ESV is far from perfect itself. The editors of the TNIV have made no statement against the ESV. I have no connection to the TNIV. The statement against the TNIV is a situation in the Christian community that needs to be addressed by somebody. I understand that it is not your fight. Fine.

You write,

I am aware that you think Sarah Sumner might make good reading for comps “to her right” (my phrase). For the rest, you have repeatedly taken issue with her core theses, the ones that drive her forthcoming book. In that sense, a very strong sense, you are against her book.

John,

I have repeatedly said that I have not read her book. I don’t think anything of the kind. I don’t know what the thesis of her book is and please do not bring this up again. I wanted to discuss the 2% of the 2,236 examples of Dr. Grudem’s kephale study with you. It is a technical detail.

Please do not share your representations of my opinions on any matter at all. Either quote me or don’t quote me.

What I am protesting is this teaching, the widespread doctrine of those who write for the CBMW.

The very wise and good plan of God, of male headship, is sought to be overturned as women now, as sinners, want instead to have their way, instead of submitting to their husbands, to do what they would like to do, and seek to work to have their husbands fulfill their will, rather than serving them;

and their husbands on their part, because they are sinners, now respond to that threat to their authority either by being abusive, which is, of course, one of the ways men can respond when their authority is challenged, or more commonly by becoming passive, acquiescing and simply not asserting the leadership they ought to as men in their homes and churches.

It is pretty simple. I find a statement like that unhealthy. John, we don’t disagree academically (not signifcantly). We disagree on how important it is to women that these kinds of things not be taught.

Comment by Sue

July 7, 2008 @ 2:34 pm

The link for Bruce Ware is here.

Comment by Sue

July 7, 2008 @ 2:39 pm

BTW Clements passages on submission are important. The word submission is both brotherly, that is used among equals, and subordinate, used within authority structures. Both.

The question is whether God has created absolute and universal authority of the husband over the wife. Is this an earthly authority structure, or one imposed by God.

Comment by Gem

July 7, 2008 @ 3:11 pm

One last thing…..the vegetable story is not unrealistic. This sort of thing happens among families where ‘headship’ is taken very seriously and we have been involved with couples who live like this.

We are not talking about sermons. We are talking about real life. Which you find very funny. It is damaging and painful that a lot of women live like this. I am not speaking about myself but other women I know.

I happen to be in recovery from living very much like this. My buttons were not pushed by the vegetable discourse. A good dose of freedom has succeeded in diminishing the tenderness of the buttons. I recognize my former weak willed, easily controlled, comp self as always learning- from preachers, books, Christian radio, online venues…- but never coming to a knowledge of the TRUTH. I was a 2 Tim 3:6-7 kinda woman enabling a 2 Tim 3:1-5 kinda man. Right there in 2 Tim 3, the problem is prophesied “In the last days, men(people) shall be…. having a form of godliness, but denying its power…”

I expect the problem and the corresponding divorce rate will increase until appropriate feminine spiritual authority is taught, respected, and encouraged by the church.

Comment by Sue

July 7, 2008 @ 3:44 pm

My argument is not against feminine vs masculine authority. I protest statements like this,

The husband is called to be the head of the wife in the same way that Christ is the head of the church. He imitates the headship of Jesus Christ. The wife is called to imitate the submission of Jesus Christ to the Father. Jesus Christ is so great that both a man and woman together are needed to display his glorious leadership and servanthood.

This was written by the executive director of CBMW to impress on men and women that men have authority and women have submission, and this is how we reflect imitate Christ. We should let Thomas A Kempis know.

Where is the servant leader in this quote? Interesting, in fact, the husband is leader and the wife is servant.

Either we agree that women should have to live as servants to men or we don’t.

Comment by tiro

July 7, 2008 @ 4:01 pm

“(1) Unwilling to accept the fact that proponents of traditionalist and neo-traditionalist frameworks can appeal to Scripture with just as much correctness as proponents of the egalitarian framework”

Of course comps are able to approach Scripture appropriately as much as egals can, just not particularly well in the area of Biblical equality and male female relationships.

“(2) Committed to a hermeneutic that does not get beyond the grammatical-historical sense of discrete biblical passages”

There is so much more to Biblical exegesis than the grammatical and historical aspects, I don’t know where you get this idea. Certainly, you have heard the cry of “context, context, context” from many equality minded Christians. And what about the whole of Scripture.

May I ask what ‘version of egalitarianism” you propose?

John further writes, “And guess what? You know as well I do that there are passages that tend in the opposite direction: Eph 5, 1 Pet 3, 1 Tim 2 are prime examples.”

Only if one thinks to read them in the commonly coined “plain meaning” of the literal words which leads one to interpret the chosen words out of context, and not in relation to the rest of Scripture. Only then does one tend to think they support patriarchal hierarchies.

Comment by tiro

July 7, 2008 @ 4:09 pm

hn, “I continue to believe that you misread Paul and Peter. They did not destroy patriarchy from within; hierarchically ordered husband/wife, parent/child, master/slave relationships are upheld in their exhortations but qualified from a Christian point of view.”

Well, you are entitled to your opinions. :)

I do not believe I am misreading. If one gives common titles like servant-leader and submissive compliant wife new definitions that come out meaning mutual respect and equal ‘authority’, I guess it is a toss up whether they are still leader follower or equal partners. You may call it as you like.

Comment by tiro

July 7, 2008 @ 4:15 pm

John, I can read as well as anyone. I’ve done my research on the usages of upotassomai. And frankly, I don’t think there is anyone among any of the ‘camps’ who has more thoroughly shown the full and accurate range of its uses in history and in Scripture than Sue has.

Not all scholars are the same in their accuracy.

Comment by Gem

July 7, 2008 @ 4:21 pm

My argument is not against feminine vs masculine authority. I protest statements like this,

We agree, Suzanne.
The statements you have quoted from CBMW deny women their God-given authority.

I have not seen anywhere that God retracted or recanted his “dominion” pronouncement of Genesis 1:26-28 and I see restoration and return to “the image of God” in

Colossians 3:9-10 “you have put off the old man/anthropos/person with his deeds, 10 and have put on the new [man] who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him[and her :) ]“

and in

2 Peter 1:3-4 “as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, 4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”

Comment by Sue

July 7, 2008 @ 5:26 pm

Clearly submission is both in authoritarian relationships and in other relationships. Marriage was treated as an authoritarian relationship in Clement, I believe, but that is no reason that we have to.

I argue that authoritarian marriages are more dangerous now than they were then because the societal counterbalances are no longer in place. However, marriage has always been hell for a certain percentage of the population, male or female, and we don’t need to pretend otherwise.

Here is Clement,

Let our whole body, then, be preserved in Christ Jesus; and let every one be subject to his neighbor, according to the special gift bestowed upon him. Let the strong not despise the weak, and let the weak show respect to the strong.

You see that the weak do not owe obedience but respect. More about this in comment #79015.

This is found in A Christian Understanding of Submission by Alan Johnson on this website.

Comment by Sue

July 7, 2008 @ 5:31 pm

Here is A Christian Understanding of Submission by Alan Johnson. This is something that I do recommend. The subtitle is “A Nonhierarchical-Complementarian Viewpoint.” It makes a lot of sense.

Comment by Frank

July 7, 2008 @ 6:08 pm

I have reviewed the converstion going between John and Liz, and Sue, etc., and found them rather interesting. However, since I don’t have Sumner’s book, and am only acquainted with her CT article, I don’t feel I can add much more to what has already been said. However, I’d like to know if you have read Alan Johnson’s “A Christian Understanding of Submission: A Nonhierarchical-Complementarian Viewpoint?” I think he not only shows honesty and integrity in his writing, but also shows that the most complete Gk-Eng Lexicon does not support “the ruler over” understanding of kephale; shows why Grudem and Piper are wrong about their denial of “mutual submission”; and the missional concerns behind 1 Pet. 2:13-15; 1:3-7; and 1 Cor. 11:2-16 that cause the “apparent” contradictions regarding our freedom in Christ. Perhaps you could interact with that article and carry on a further converstation from there?

Comment by faith

July 8, 2008 @ 7:38 am

I have been listening to the dialogue but too busy for response. here are my thoughts.

we need to see the bible for what it is. it is not a heavenly download of exact prescriptions. it is a book inspired by God but written through humans within a time and a culture. we are invited into the thinking and discernment processes, called to apply the heart and character displayed by God and Jesus Christ in every ethical situation.

as humans we often pick and choose which verses about women are normative and currently land on the headship and submission texts as the ones to obey.

no one every brings up texts about women that are wierd for us to obey…

what about the concubine in Judges, the one who is given to the men who want to have sex with the male levite. the right thing to do then was to give the virgin daughter and the concubine to the evil men. today we would not consider that to be the ethical response. (cultural lenses matter) who would throw their wife out to be raped to spare a man from being sodomized.

then there is Ecclestiastes, the author searches among a thousand men and women and finds no righteous women but only one righteous man. (lenses matter) would we apply that today to our marriage relationships?

there are others. my point is that we should look at the whole of scripture and notice the character of God and the character of Jesus as the norm for our ethical interpretations. We should be wary of cultural aspects of the text and really think them through. i am uncomfortable dividing up which parts of God’s character are feminine and which parts are masculine. we will surely error because we are looking through our human cultural visions and applying that to God. (that is dangereous ethically)

The bottom line is… Every Christian is to lead, serve and love like God… and live like Jesus, no one is exempt. That includes women. There is not a female way to be like God or a male way to be like God. we are each one to follow Jesus in whatever we do… be it in a marriage or as a parent or in the workplace. I do not see the bible prescribing roles. it describes roles within the world the text is written and applies the gospel and character of God to the roles that existed in the culture.

And that is what we are to do. it’s like we are stuck looking at the trees when there is a forest that we might see if we broaden our view.

why can’t we see that it is following jEsus that counts most be we male or female.

Comment by faith

July 8, 2008 @ 8:04 am

for the record… I have come to see the Roman household codes as a wierd, oppressive social order. i realize that Peter and Paul were applying the gospel to those situations so that christians would not be accused and suspected of treason. the household structure was thought to be given by the gods and necessary for the power and dominance or Rome. faith and government were not separated. adhereing the the houshold codes was considered pious. the liberating message of the gospel invited unity between jews and gentiles, slaves and free, men and women. this upset the roman system of piety and created suspicion in the minds of the romans. christians were suspected and scapegoated. that is the context of Peter and Paul’s writing on the household codes. Any good commentary will speak of that. A great book on this is, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them.

because christian’s shared the table meal, becuase they functioned as brothers and sisters (the most equal relationship), they upset the roman empire’s system of order. the seeming adherance to the houshold codes was the protect the church from persecution. Roles and authority are not being prescribed, such were… the gospel was being applied to the existing norms.

we must not error and accept the roman system of order. we must carefully apply the gospel ideas and the kingdom vision to our families and workplaces and communities.

if that is radical, then i am radical. i think the household structure is wierd and part of an order that is illegitimate for today.

Comment by John

July 8, 2008 @ 9:35 am

Suzanne,

I am in the midst of a family reunion, so please have a little patience if I am not very timely in my responses.

I was blown away yesterday by a cousin of mine from Missouri, a research nurse at UM. She has had three children in three different marriages, her Dad was a consummate womanizer and left her Mom when she was just not yet a teenager. I hadn’t seen Cathy in ten years, and here she is, despite everything I just recounted, with a beautiful serene Christian faith. She has built bridges back to her father (who has now become an active faithful Christian). She is clearly an excellent mother, and tries to keep her two sisters on the straight and narrow (so far, a hopeless cause). She is such a fine example of grace under fire. I don’t want to pretend she did not her own mistakes. I’m sure she would not pretend in that way either. Still, her resilient faith smashed by innate cynicism in the ability of things gone bad to be righted.

First of all, I appreciate the fact that you say that we do not have significant disagreements on the technical issues.

I think you can be very clear-eyed about the meaning of New Testament texts and other texts written in ancient Greek. This sets you apart from a number of “biblical egals.” Indeed, I’m not sure that phrase fits you.

What is not clear to me is whether you think canonical exegesis – the kind of thing Chrysostom, Sarah Sumner, and GEM on this thread, all do – is a route you yourself would recommend. I can’t remember you ever doing this kind of exegesis explicitly. My point: it is essential to do so. Sumner’s contribution is incomprehensible if the issue of canonical exegesis is left unaddressed.

You say: You completely misinterpreted the vegetable story. It was not a sermon. . . . It is time that people stop laughing at abuse, psychological or otherwise. It is in very poor taste.

In comment #86926, you talk about a sermon. It sounded to me like that is where you got the teaching that a wife is in non-submission if she purchases the wrong vegetables for dinner. Are you saying otherwise?

You mischaracterize when you say that I or anyone else who finds inane teaching funny is laughing at abuse. But I am not going to ask the editors to remove your mischaracterization. It is eloquent in its own way.

You say:

I don’t know what the thesis of her book is and please do not bring this up again. I wanted to discuss the 2% of the 2,236 examples of Dr. Grudem’s kephale study with you. It is a technical detail.

You interact with Sarah Sumner’s core theses directly and indirectly rather often. I’m sorry that you are unwilling to take my word for it that those same theses are central to her forthcoming book. I have even pointed out that I corresponded with Sarah to make sure I did not misrepresent her positions.

This thread was meant to be about her contribution to the comp-egal debate. It is not about Dr. Grudem’s kephale study. Nor is it about CBMW’s positions. Sarah is not a member of CBMW. She explicitly does not self-identify as a member of that faction.

You are on subject when you say:

About Sumner’s book, you wrote,

She rightly points out that the conceptual framework of egalitarianism among contemporary Christians often lies in political liberal thought, not in Scripture or tradition.

And in response, I wrote,

I rightly point out that the conceptual framework of complementarianism among contemporary Christians often lies in political conservative thought and tradition, not in Scripture.

That’s an interesting statement. I’m wondering what politically conservative author or tradition you have in mind.

You seem to want to concede Sarah’s point – that egalitarianism is a product of political liberal thought – but neutralize it by claiming that complementarianism is, in the same way, the product of a conservative political tradition.

Comment by John

July 8, 2008 @ 9:47 am

Frank,

if you read my posts Darrell links to at the top of this thread, you will get a fair idea of the content of the forthcoming book on issues you discuss. It should be clear that Sarah Sumner’s approach cannot be assimilated to the positions of CBMW or the favorite targets of a number of egals, Piper and Grudem.

If you feel that it is not necessary to interact with Sarah Sumner’s contribution to the debate – it is already available in her published work, her forthcoming book builds on her earlier work – you leave me to think that you accept that hers is a biblically legitimate approach. I would welcome that. Please clarify.

Comment by John

July 8, 2008 @ 10:20 am

Faith,

You say:

my point is that we should look at the whole of scripture and notice the character of God and the character of Jesus as the norm for our ethical interpretations.

More traditional Christians, myself included, do not make “the character of Jesus” the touchstone of our faith. We also value the writings of Paul and Peter very highly.

We are skeptical of those like Adolf Harnack – one of the greatest scholars who ever lived, by the way – who reduced the teaching of Christianity to the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man – and then signed a manifesto, as did most denizens of the ivory tower of the German scholarship, urging that Germany go to war. WWI, the result, was one of the most ridiculous wars ever fought. So much for the brotherhood of man.

On the theological side, the evident bankruptcy of liberal Jesuology sparked a renewal in the form of theologians like Karl Barth, Wilhelm Vischer, and many others. I’m just trying to explain why your “character of Jesus” touchstone raises red flags for Christians of a more classical bent.

Furthermore, if you wish to suggest that Paul and Peter misunderstood the teaching of their own Savior insofar as they did not challenge the “weird, oppressive social order” of their day, but instead exhorted fellow-Christians to adhere to it but to requalify it in terms of Christology, well, who knows, you may be right. I don’t expect to know for sure until Judgment Day. I do expect a lot of surprises on that Day.

Nevertheless, I proceed on the assumption that Paul and Peter did not misunderstand the teaching of their Savior, but that those egalitarians who suggest they did misunderstand Jesus.

A napkin-sized argument backing up this assumption might go like this. If Jesus had wanted to turn the weird oppressive social order in which he lived upside down, he would have included 6 women among the 12 of his inner circle of disciples. The chief apostle would have been named “Petra” rather than “Peter.” Furthermore, he would have told the Roman centurion, the representative par excellence of that social order, and one who profited from it greatly – that he was going to hell.

But he didn’t do any of these things. He was not a social reformer or a revolutionary. It is, I think, extraordinarily interesting that, in other times and places, some of Jesus’ most ardent and genuine followers have been social reformers and revolutionaries (I’m thinking of Zwingli, Bucer, and Calvin, for example). But Jesus, Peter, and Paul were not.

Comment by John

July 8, 2008 @ 10:41 am

Suzanne,

You say:

I argue that authoritarian marriages are more dangerous now than they were then because the societal counterbalances are no longer in place. However, marriage has always been hell for a certain percentage of the population, male or female, and we don’t need to pretend otherwise.

True, marriage, as experienced by a fairly large percent of the population, is more about the kind of things Nietzsche admired than the kind of thing Paul talks about in 1 Cor 13. But what Greco-Roman counterbalances do you have in mind?

I would argue in precisely the opposite direction. The societal counterbalances in place in countries like the US and Canada today are so strong that it is difficult if not impossible for authoritarian marriages of a traditionalist kind to function as they once did. Abuse remains possible because human beings know how to abuse each other in any framework. But it is relatively hard in a legal and cultural framework which is overwhelmingly egal for a traditional marriage to function as it was originally intended.

As for the attempt to hierarchically order marriage according to a neo-traditionalist template, it is also a very counter-cultural project by definition. In contradistinction to traditional counter-cultures, neo-traditionalism is subject to producing absurdities and inanities we rightly associate with non-traditional counter-cultures more generally.

Think the “Flower Children.” Well, maybe that is not the best example, since a part of the inner child in me is a flower child.

Comment by Sue

July 8, 2008 @ 10:54 am

John,

There is no time pressure. I admit that there has been some misunderstanding about the vegetable story. The tragedy of these things are very hard to communicate. I won’t make another attempt.

I would like to just focus on one or two aspects. We seem to agree that the household codes were an authority – submission framework in their original form. However, the question is whether the authority of the male is prescribed by God or was part of culture. Egalitarians contend male authority is not prescribed by God.

Where some of us differ, that is you and I, is how damaging an authority – submission relationship in marriage can be. You bring up examples, but I see this as closer to different domains of authority, a different model. I say that an authority-submission relationship can be terribly damaging and needs to be fought as did slavery. I also contend that my being public about it is my conviction of what I should do.

So, any system which is defined as male authority and female submission is not, to my mind, an acceptable way for human beings to live. That people did so in the past does not sway me. First, we know that people have lived miserable existences and still do. This is no reason to emulate it. On the other hand, we wee that male authority has been balanced by female authority in varying ways. Believe me, complementarianism as defined by CBMW has no room for arenas of female authority.

I contend that the teachings of CBMW which I have cited above are dangerous and damaging. I resist being further drawn into splitting comp into hard and soft. CBMW is in the middle position and defines complementarianism for many.

I argue that any relationship in which one person has all the authority and the other all the submission is slavery. I cannot say more about what an unacceptable way this is for anyone at all to live. I feel no call to lighten up on this.

I simply accept that some people will not understand. But it is evident to me that many do.

What I have seen of Sumners take on this does not have a lot of appeal. Many things are justified by the scripture but we don’t do them. I don’t see large groups of celibate and impoverished apostles traveling from one place to another subjecting themselves to a cruel and dictatorial government. I don’t see rafts of men resigning the right to vote or agitating to rejoin Britain. I don’t see Christians agitating for a return to any other authority structures which were in place at the time of the epistles.

Perhaps the biggest transition away from the scriptural model of submission was the reformation, after which the church could no longer present itself as “one body” here on earth. Christ’s bride was divided. The next step towards rebellion against the unity of the church has been church attendance on the principle of personal choice rather than by parish. And so on.

Comment by faith

July 8, 2008 @ 11:04 am

Jesus said, follow me. Jesus said, i am the way, truth and the life. the early christians had no power to overturn the roman empire. They chose instead to live in community differently eating at the same table, which had meaning about the equality and dignity of all humans. That is what Gal. 3:36-38 is about… a new community formed in Christ through his life, death and resurrection. there are excellent arguments for why jesus had no females among the twelve. he was making a statement about the twelve tribes of israel using the twelve disciples as an image. he had no gentiles either… it cannot be legitimately used as an argument against women in ministry.

you are writing/speaking within your own lenses. unfortunately complimentarians often do not admit they have lenses.

we have oppressive structures today as well and we must again apply the teachings of Christ and the new community formed and constituted by the Holy Spirit. We must always be seeking to be Christ formed. i don’t think being Christ formed has anything to do with war–just because one person believed in the war does not mean all those who seek to be christ formed believe the same way. that does not dismiss the fact that we are to follow Christ, regardless of how well.

Comment by faith

July 8, 2008 @ 11:05 am

that’s gal 3:26-28 opps.

Comment by tiro

July 8, 2008 @ 11:07 am

John writes to Sue,” I think you can be very clear-eyed about the meaning of New Testament texts and other texts written in ancient Greek. This sets you apart from a number of “biblical egals.” Indeed, I’m not sure that phrase fits you.”

You seem to equate Biblical egals with a negative meaning. May I ask what that is and why.

John writes to Sue,” You seem to want to concede Sarah’s point – that egalitarianism is a product of political liberal thought – but neutralize it by claiming that complementarianism is, in the same way, the product of a conservative political tradition.”

If someone would be so kind as to explain to me, who am an unknown in this debate among some who seem to be acquainted with each other, why anyone would think that the scholars of CBE (and others who have come to the concept of Biblical equality) have come to this perception of Scripture via liberal secular thinking or political secular thinking or political church thinking. This blows me away. The people I know, as well as myself, came to these perceptions with many prayerful tears before God, sweating over Scriptural research.

In the same breath it is not at all unusual to think of ‘complementarian’ thinking to have arisen out of a few hundred years of church political traditionalism. They didn’t change much outside of the name.

I also have a comment about your quip on “canonical exegesis”. Is it your premise that if people do not quote Scripture enough in their dialogue with you that they therefore are not making the judgments and discernments via deep Scriptural study? If so, I have to say that is very short sighted on your part.

All of us can beware that in discussions of this sort that the measure of criticalness we put forth of others will indeed come back to bite us. (Matt. 7:1-6)

Comment by Martin

July 8, 2008 @ 11:17 am

John,
“As for the attempt to hierarchically order marriage according to a neo-traditionalist template, it is also a very counter-cultural project by definition. In contradistinction to traditional counter-cultures, neo-traditionalism is subject to producing absurdities and inanities we rightly associate with non-traditional counter-cultures more generally.”

Nicely put although plain English would have been nice. I’m not sure who you are referencing as new-traditionalist. Do you mean CBMW, Grudem and Piper, Bruce Ware and Paige Patterson, the Bayley Brothers, Mouser and CCC, or whom?

Comment by John

July 8, 2008 @ 11:18 am

I am glad to see that you recognize the importance of canonical exegesis. However, I think you have a tendency to conflate two levels of analysis:

(1) What Paul and Peter were trying to say
(2) How we are to understand what they say in the light of the entire witness of Scripture.

With all due respect, I find that you want Jesus, Peter, and Paul to be egals. They were not. They were not revolutionaries, which they would have had to have been to be egals in their context.

Their teaching innovated with respect to traditional mores, but in this particular sphere, along fairly conservative lines. It can be said that they were on the vanguard of developments within Judaism, and Paul, within Hellenistic Judaism.

But it should be common knowledge, despite even recent books that try to prove the contrary, that Peter and Paul were not proto-feminists. I recommend the clear-headed analysis of Carolyn Osiek on this topic.

Comment by John

July 8, 2008 @ 11:19 am

That comment was in reply to Tiro’s comments.

Comment by John

July 8, 2008 @ 11:23 am

Hi Martin,

Sorry about my contorted English. I’m writing with too much haste at the moment.

Yes, based on what I’ve heard about the authors you mention, it would be fair to characterize them as counter-cultural neo-traditionalists. Some succeed at making their Yellow Submarine work better than others.

I prefer another, in my opinion, more sea-worthy craft.

Comment by faith

July 8, 2008 @ 11:38 am

John, i think your tone is disrespectful.

it is just as legitimate biblically to ask the questions i am asking as the ones you are asking.

it is good biblical interpretation to examine the text in the light of the historical situation in which it was written. it is sound to consider the relationship of Christ and the gospel and its application to our world. it is mature, not liberal, to examine the teachings of Paul and Peter in the light of their historical context. it is also leglitimate to seek gospel application to our contemporary world.

the interpretation set forth by Ware, and CBMW is so much more like the interpretation of texts when the church defended slavery. i just cannot buy those/your interpretations. they do not mesh with God’s desire for humans, the way Jesus lived on the earth.

i am not a liberal. i believe in the bible just as much if not more than you do… however, i am honest enough to question the things that are really wierd and wrestle in relationship with God through those difficult passages.

Comment by Gem

July 8, 2008 @ 12:13 pm

What is not clear to me is whether you think canonical exegesis – the kind of thing Chrysostom, Sarah Sumner, and GEM on this thread, all do – is a route you yourself would recommend.

Wow, John, you honor me to put me into such distinguished company. (I had to go do a little research on the definition of “canonical exegete” :P ) I’m not sure if it fits???

You mentioned earlier in this thread a kind of hermeneutic:

87026
(2) Committed to a hermeneutic that does not get beyond the grammatical-historical sense of discrete biblical passages. You thus put your train on a track headed for the abyss. If this is your hermeneutic (and if you have another hermeneutic, one which allows you to qualify the sense of one passage in the light of others, you might consider taking a passage like Ephesians 5 and applying it thereto: that’s how I preach on this passage in order to ground the version of egalitarianism I recommend in my ministry), you will perforce get all bent out of shape if a discrete biblical passage doesn’t back up your favorite points but in fact tends in the opposite direction. And guess what? You know as well I do that there are passages that tend in the opposite direction: Eph 5, 1 Pet 3, 1 Tim 2 are prime examples.

And you mentioned:

86914 meaning is not located at the word-level, but at the discourse level

I’m not sure, perhaps I will step out of that distinguished company here? I’m not familiar with what “grammatical-historical sense” is. I really like word studies and the Lord has shown me some very interesting things by looking deeper into the words (using online word study tools- I have nothing but a rudimentary koine Greek exposure and no Hebrew).

As far as scripture interpretation, I was taught (in hermeneutics class at a reputable conservative seminary) that “CONTEXT IS KING”- ie reading a verse in its context is the number one requirement for good hermeneutics.

You mention 1 Tim 2. In this SAME book, SAME letter, SAME Paul has the strongest statement of wifely authority I have seen in Scripture

from 1 Tim 5:14 (click here) Do you see “guide the house”? Now look at the definition of that word in the online Greek lexicon at Tufts University: oikodespot-eô and oikodespoteō to be master of a house or head of a family, to rule the household

Have you ever heard before that WOMEN are to be “master of the home”/ “queen of the castle”?
How come 1 Tim 2:12 is paraded about while 1 Tim 5:14 is hidden? What motivates that?

I have also looked deeply at “KEEPER” in Titus 2 (as in the “Titus 2 woman”) and I believe the true sense and CALLING inherent in that word bears almost no resemblance to “traditional” interpretation. My study on that is found here: http://2dig.wordpress.com/keeper/

Comment by Gem

July 8, 2008 @ 12:14 pm

oops, I had that formatted, let me try again

What is not clear to me is whether you think canonical exegesis – the kind of thing Chrysostom, Sarah Sumner, and GEM on this thread, all do – is a route you yourself would recommend.

Wow, John, you honor me to put me into such distinguished company. (I had to go do a little research on the definition of “canonical exegete” :P ) I’m not sure if it fits???

You mentioned earlier in this thread a kind of hermeneutic:

87026
(2) Committed to a hermeneutic that does not get beyond the grammatical-historical sense of discrete biblical passages. You thus put your train on a track headed for the abyss. If this is your hermeneutic (and if you have another hermeneutic, one which allows you to qualify the sense of one passage in the light of others, you might consider taking a passage like Ephesians 5 and applying it thereto: that’s how I preach on this passage in order to ground the version of egalitarianism I recommend in my ministry), you will perforce get all bent out of shape if a discrete biblical passage doesn’t back up your favorite points but in fact tends in the opposite direction. And guess what? You know as well I do that there are passages that tend in the opposite direction: Eph 5, 1 Pet 3, 1 Tim 2 are prime examples.

And you mentioned:

86914 meaning is not located at the word-level, but at the discourse level

I’m not sure, perhaps I will step out of that distinguished company here? I’m not familiar with what “grammatical-historical sense” is. I really like word studies and the Lord has shown me some very interesting things by looking deeper into the words (using online word study tools- I have nothing but a rudimentary koine Greek exposure and no Hebrew).

As far as scripture interpretation, I was taught (in hermeneutics class at a reputable conservative seminary) that “CONTEXT IS KING”- ie reading a verse in its context is the number one requirement for good hermeneutics.

You mention 1 Tim 2. In this SAME book, SAME letter, SAME Paul has the strongest statement of wifely authority I have seen in Scripture

from 1 Tim 5:14 (click here) Do you see “guide the house”? Now look at the definition of that word in the online Greek lexicon at Tufts University: oikodespot-eô and oikodespoteō to be master of a house or head of a family, to rule the household

Have you ever heard before that WOMEN are to be “master of the home”/ “queen of the castle”?
How come 1 Tim 2:12 is paraded about while 1 Tim 5:14 is hidden? What motivates that?

I have also looked deeply at “KEEPER” in Titus 2 (as in the “Titus 2 woman”) and I believe the true sense and CALLING inherent in that word bears almost no resemblance to “traditional” interpretation. My study on that is found here: http://2dig.wordpress.com/keeper/

Comment by Frank

July 8, 2008 @ 12:29 pm

John, I wish I had the time to interact with your presentation of Prof Sumner’s work. For if you had read my comments on her CT article, you will recognize that at this point I see her work as a new variation of an old theme long played by complementarians, and so would certainly not approve it. But I could be wrong, and so when I have time, I will read it and see what I can and cannot agree with. But, unfortunately, as I have said on another posting, my time is pretty much taken up with finding a new job and trying to get my commentary on Jude’s letter published. And since I have committed myself to writing a blog on “The Trinity and the Neo-Arian Threat Among Evangelicals,” I’ve already begun research on addressing this heresy that threatens to wreck Evangelical Protestantism. So it will be some time before I can properly inteact with you. I hope that is a adequate response, for now, at any rate.

Comment by tiro

July 8, 2008 @ 12:52 pm

John writes, “I am glad to see that you recognize the importance of canonical exegesis”.

How nice to get your ‘approval’. In fact I’ve been teaching it to studious Christians for somewhere around 35 years, along with grammatical-historical, and CONTEXTUAL (including the input of the whole of Scripture) interpretation.

You write, “However, I think you have a tendency to conflate two levels of analysis:(1) What Paul and Peter were trying to say
(2) How we are to understand what they say in the light of the entire witness of Scripture.”

You are correct that I do tend to merge what Paul and Peter said with them understanding the entire witness of the OT as well as the witness of what Christ said to them personally. How we apply it will be different than how they applied it in their time though.

You write, “With all due respect, I find that you want Jesus, Peter, and Paul to be egals. They were not. They were not revolutionaries, which they would have had to have been to be egals in their context.”

Correct again. Yes I believe that for their time Peter and Paul were revolutionizing the concept of marital relationships, and in fact all relationships. I recall that they both died for their revolutionary ideas. Even though, as you say, they presented their changes along conservative lines (otherwise they might not have been listened to at all), they were still counter cultural enough to have created a group called “Christians” who followed after that radical man Jesus who claimed He was God’s Son and dared to call God “Father”.

By ‘proto-feminists’, do you mean those brave women who challenged the churches in the 1800’s and gained women the freedom of speech, educational rights, voting privileges, the privilege to own things themselves, have credit, the right to divorce, to not abandon or abort their children, get equal pay for equal work, etc. ?

If so I would say that was indeed the aim of Christ who spoke to women others would not, who sent women on missions others would not, who taught women when such was considered disgraceful, etc. And thus I would say that that was the aim of Paul who said “let the woman learn”, and who applauded many women teachers and leaders in Acts and Romans, including commissioning a woman leader to carry his epistle.

Frankly, I don’t think it was all as super conservative as you suggest. Somewhat sneakily conservative, absolutely. I call that wisdom. But not the super barely noticeable kind of conservatism you suggest. And FWIW, I think Paul knew exactly what he was starting with his actions, in the same sneaky way how he got Onesimus released forever put a kink in slavery.

Comment by tiro

July 8, 2008 @ 12:54 pm

Frank wrote: “I have committed myself to writing a blog on “The Trinity and the Neo-Arian Threat Among Evangelicals,” I’ve already begun research on addressing this heresy that threatens to wreck Evangelical Protestantism.”

I would very much like to read your research and article on that. Do you have a link?

Comment by Gem

July 8, 2008 @ 3:48 pm

Tiro,

I would be grateful if you would explain the terms. What is “grammatical-historical”? Does “contextual” differ from “canonical exegesis”? I gather from a google search that “canonical exegesis” draws upon the entire bible to interpret texts: with the NT clarifying the OT (and frowns upon fanciful Hebrew word studies)

Thanks :)

Comment by tiro

July 8, 2008 @ 4:20 pm

87062 Gem…. briefly

Sometimes ‘titles’ don’t accurately convey how the term is expressed in practice. It seems to me that often those who say they use canonical exegesis, keeping in mind the relative sections throughout all the Bible, do not like to use the immediate context of the chapters in question. If find this a strange dichotomy.

Grammatical context is to take into consideration all the intricacies of the original language, including the range of meanings for words, their uses throughout the Scriptures as well as secular society, their grammatical forms, etc. It also will take into consideration whether the words are metaphors, idioms (words that were used to paint another picture in their era…. Such as “a rolling stone gathers no moss”), etc.

A Historical context will take into consideration the history of the era in order to hope to have an idea how what was written would have been viewed/’heard” by those who read them when they were written. If the subject is about marriage, then a historical view will research what marriage was like at the time, legally, religiously, and in secular society. This is how we know that Paul’s words about marriage were radical to the hearers. They rarely married for love yet Paul told them to not only love (agapeo, not phileo) but to give their lives for their wives in a way similar to what Christ did in dying for us.

Put all of these things together and we get a much richer and more accurate picture of the written word.

Hope that helps GEM.

Comment by Sue

July 8, 2008 @ 5:14 pm

John,

You write,

You seem to equate Biblical egals with a negative meaning. May I ask what that is and why.

I have no negative feeling for either biblical egalitarians or Sumners book. I am being misrepresented on both accounts. I really haven’t read enough of either. I tend to cause irritation by my obsession over details. I regret this, but the world is made up of all kinds and I am one of the kinds of people that God made.

I have two strong positions. First, complementarianism, as reflected in the texts above, that the male has authority and the female has submission, is to my mind immoral and defaces the image of God in humanity. We each have arenas of authority and submission which we must seek to exercise as we believe God would have us do.

For someone to be completely deprived of personal authority is no better than being dead. IMO. Excuse the hyperbole but I have a friend, my age, who does not see any way out of her marriage, economically and otherwise. She has attempted suicide many times. She is under psychiatric treatment but the psychiatrist has been unable to facilitate her leaving her marriage. Her husband is a Christian leader and teaches in a seminary. The image of God is defaced by the fact that she has been denied any arena of authority in her life.

I do not think that in this day and age we can recreate, on a large scale, a separate female domain, such as may have existed in upper middle class Victorian England. I refer to the kind of thing one finds in the letters of Henry Venn, secretary of the CMS, to a Victorian lady about her realm of influence, with men and women equally, through her social station. Those days are past. Not that it existed widely then. Have you read Middlemarch?

Second, my own personal beliefs are not wedded to any particular text, such as Gal. 3:28. I resist proof-texting in any way. I see the image of God in humanity as best served by mutual, (in marriage, different but reciprocal) submission between men and women, and between fellow Christians and all human beings. I am wedded to the narratives, to the place for female initiative and an arena of authority under God. I am wedded to the prophetic teaching of freedom for prisoners. I seek rather to understand the full teaching of the text from start to finish and the subsequent interpretation.

I have no criticism of Biblical egalitarians, and I don’t rightly understand Sumners critique of egalitarianism either. I don’t want to be on record as making any criticism of her writing because I have read too little of it, and everything said between us is coloured by some personal animosity between us, whose origin is a complete mystery to me, and does not seem to be academic, but only this, that I see male authority/female submission as an unacceptable way to live.

Comment by Sue

July 8, 2008 @ 5:48 pm

John,

On a further note, you quote “shelf life” against the egalitarian marriage. What do you make of these results?

The Barna Research Group’s national study showed that members of nondenominational churches divorce 34 percent of the time in contrast to 25 percent for the general population. Nondenominational churches would include large numbers of Bible churches and other conservative evangelicals. Baptists had the highest rate of the major denominations: 29 percent. Born-again Christians’ rate was 27 percent. To make matters even more distressing for believers, atheists/agnostics had the lowest rate of divorce 21 percent.

I do not believe that through depriving women of authority in marriage one can reduce the rate of divorce. And if one went to the extreme of making women so dependent on their husband that even an abused women could not leave her husband, then that would not be a good thing. Divorce is not universally the worst thing that can happen to someone. Have you read Martin Bucer’s divorce tract?

Comment by Sue

July 8, 2008 @ 6:39 pm

John,

You also mentioned couples of other cultures. I know a woman who was cut up in little pieces and put in the trunk of the car. Makes divorce sound rather good. I do not like to see overgeneralization. I work in a secular multicultural environment and deal with hundreds of parents all the time.

Comment by Sue

July 8, 2008 @ 6:41 pm

Yes, she was from a patriarchal culture.

Comment by Trevor

July 8, 2008 @ 7:38 pm

John, going way back to comment 87017 where you give us a bit of a handle on your own family dynamic and invite psychoanalysis, which no one has taken up by the way. Thank you for that. Interestingly your background is not that far removed from my own, the detail of which I will not go into here. But suffice to say that a social worker friend of our married children, who knows our family well, marvels that, considering my family background, I am a such a remarkably well socially integrated person. Perhaps the same could be said of you.

In my own case I put it down to both God’s sovereign control of my life’s circumstance and the gracious, ongoing work of Christ in empowering me, over the years, to respond in Christ-like ways to the different stages of personal and family development. Again, perhaps the same could be said of you. My family background has encouraged me to be a better listener because life, for anyone, can be far more complex than I may at first perceive their immediate, outward appearances to be. I imagine you may see yourself in a similar light. This is perhaps why you are arguing so strongly for ‘middle ground’ in this debate.

However, unlike you I do not have the academic qualifications or technical theological skills to go toe to toe with yourself, or others on this forum, when it comes down to debating the finer points of interpretive know how. In that respect, I, along with countless others who make up the rank and file of the Christian church throughout the world and throughout the ages, have to rely on the ‘experts’ that we choose to believe. Generally we will make our choice on the basis of either the ’safe’ religious and cultural framework within which we are most familiar, or if we should venture out, because of life’s circumstance, or practical reality challenging our previously comfortable paradigm, we will still gravitate towards a teaching or teacher with whom we feel most comfortable.

The bottom line is, we will all ultimately choose our own experts. I feel, after more than 40 years of involvement in the life of the church, 35 as a full-time Pastor, that I can speak for the mass of ‘followers’ who will never be leaders or be in a position to equip themselves to fully understand this rigorous a theological debate on these issues. Even in your own case you have made a definite choice to support the position of Sarah Sumner and resonate strongly with both her argumentation and what you know of her character through personal interaction. That’s OK, that your choice, on those grounds.

From what I read throughout these lengthy threads and the veritable ocean of words, it hurts and disappoints you to see or hear her good work, by virtue of your life experience and understanding, seemingly denigrated or invalidated. Unfortunately, at times, it seems to me, you are less than gracious in conceding that others have made a choice too, in terms of their ‘experts’ and that they are being ‘honest’ in their appraisal of the data offered. In fairness to you perhaps your passionate concern for the establishment of ‘middle-ground’ also makes it difficult for you to hear the legitimacy of the claims of the equally passionate persons on this forum who, because of their life experience, differ from you.

Personally, in respect to this debate, I more readily gravitate to the John Stackhouse conclusions in his book ‘Finally Feminist’. Briefly, and in my paraphrasing of his suppositions, he argues that while patriarchy and egalitarianism can and do exist side by side in the church the overall teaching of Scripture seems to point to an egalitarian preference. He further states that God, in His desire to see the Gospel advanced throughout the ages, ignores the presence and associated problems of patriarchy in order to accomplish His missional purposes. From what I read there (in Finally Feminist) Stackhouse would believe that in time patriarchy (or a hierarchy tradition in any of its possible forms) would eventually give way, in the same way that slavery was eventually abolished, to fully egalitarian human relationships. For him there is an, in the meantime, how should we respond to this debate? His answer, as far as is possible, would be for a truce and a peaceful co-existence but never the suggestion of embracing a ‘comp-egal’ hybrid. That’s my greatest difficulty with where your argument seems to be headed John. I would venture to say that that is the concern of other Biblical Equality commenters on this forum.

Another aspect to all of this is that while the slavery battle would appear to be over in that it has been abolished by law in all of the developed countries it not only still exists but is rampant, particularly in the sex-trade, and must continue to be opposed in all its ugliness and injustice. Part of the reason that slavery continues to be an issue in our civilized world is the hierarchical structuring of a society, culture or religion that values men more than it does women. It is mostly women who are the modern day victims of slavery and against whom these injustices are presently being committed. For that reason alone I am both embarrassed and ashamed that an arm of the 21st century church still not only holds to the, what is to me, anachronistic teaching of hierarchy but actually believes that it is God’s order. This, to me, is a heinous slight on both the character and beneficence of God.

Finally, while I agree agree with you that, “Abuse remains possible because human beings know how to abuse each other in any framework,” I cannot go along with your conclusion that, “… it is relatively hard in a legal and cultural framework which is overwhelmingly egal for a traditional marriage to function as it was originally intended.” I would argue that the trappings of hierarchy and traditionalism are very much alive and well in our supposed egalitarian cultures and that their continued presence ‘privileges’ males, where the abuse is perpetrated against females, to mistreat women. I would also argue against the notion that hierarchy or patriarchy is necessary to the’ function of a traditional marriage as intended’, presumably by God.

My belief, along with other commenters on this forum, is that a marriage where mutual submission and a genuine desire on the part of both partners to be under the headship of Christ exists there will not be an occasion for abuse. It seems to me that rather than looking to idealogised traditional marriage to shore up the deplorable failure of christian marriages we look to raising the standard of expectation within an equality based relationship. Much of the discussion, from your part, has been on your experience of disappointment with egalitarian marriages. While that is a sad reality it is probably more related to a humanistic interpretation of egalitarianism and a carnal working out of that relationship than true biblical equality and mutual submission. Enough said.

Comment by Mary

July 8, 2008 @ 9:45 pm

John, you said this to/about me:

“It seems to me that this kind of conversation is not desired by you.”

This is another of your false impressions of what I think/desire/believe. This is the kind of comment that I believe shows a decided lack of the very humility and honesty that you claim we all need to embody. It makes it difficult for me to desire ANY conversation with you, quite frankly.

I have given examples of what Sumner SAYS are weaknesses in egalitarian scholarship, but which are not representative of egalitarian scholarship. You have consistently offered only accusations about my beliefs/desires/thoughts in response to my repeated objection to Sumner’s misstatements of egalitarian beliefs and teachings.

The hoop-jumping you are putting me through (and not only me, but others) just to get to actual conversation about already-raised points is difficult. More difficult than I have time for the rest of this week, I’m afraid. So I’m bowing out. (Mis)construe that however you wish, John, but I’m hoping you’ll come to recognize how antagonistic you have come across in this exchange, with me and with others, and perhaps find a way to better express the humility and honesty that you clearly want FROM others, yet aren’t yet communicating well TO others.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 10:25 am

Tiro,

You say:

You seem to equate Biblical egals with a negative meaning. May I ask what that is and why.
Because biblical egals, as Sarah Sumner also points out, are too often unwilling to admit that a number of biblical passages move in the direction of upholding authoritarian rather than egalitarian structures. I have say similar things to say about biblical comps, as does Sarah Sumner, that comps often read things in biblical passages that are not there, and fail to qualify the exercise of authority with christological integrity.

You say:

If someone would be so kind as to explain to me . . . why anyone would think that the scholars of CBE (and others who have come to the concept of Biblical equality) have come to this perception of Scripture via liberal secular thinking or political secular thinking or political church thinking. This blows me away. The people I know, as well as myself, came to these perceptions with many prayerful tears before God, sweating over Scriptural research.

So, it’s just an accident that egalitarianism as biblical egals understand it cannot be found among Jews and Christians until liberal political thought began to put its stamp on our culture? I don’t think so.

By the way, I think that liberal political thought has made significant and positive contributions to human culture. It has had negative consequences as well.

You say:

I also have a comment about your quip on “canonical exegesis”. Is it your premise that if people do not quote Scripture enough in their dialogue with you that they therefore are not making . . . discernments via deep Scriptural study?

No, that is not what I mean by “canonical exegesis.” Canonical exegesis, at a minimum, is about interpreting scripture in light of scripture in accordance with a rule of faith which is itself derived from Scripture. This is like the principle GEM refers to, that “context is king,” but it is more than that. The context is further defined as the entire witness of scripture, not just a particular, occasional letter. This is precisely the kind of exegesis that Chrysostom, Luther, and Sarah Sumner engage in. They do not come to identical conclusions on specific issues, but why should they?

Tiro, my problem with your approach is that in the process of determining that your version of egalitarianism is compatible with scripture – a conclusion with which I agree, with provisos – you deem as unscriptural the positions of Chrysostom, Luther, and Sarah Sumner, or those like them. At least, that is how I understand you. Please clarify.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 10:35 am

Tiro,

I enjoy your characterization of Peter and Paul as “sneakily conservative.” I don’t agree. They really were more conservative than you wish to admit. But at least you note they took a different approach than you do.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 10:39 am

Re: women being cut up into pieces and put into the trunk of a car.

Well, things like that happened in Paul and Peter’s day under patriarchy as they knew it. So were they in error not to ditch patriarchy as “simply wrong”?

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 10:57 am

Trevor,

Thanks for your comments and your willingness to make sense out of my position based on biographical information I provided. I doubt we differ very much in practice in the ways we approach these questions. But we probably differ some. For example, if I were a pastor in a large exurban church with young on-fire Christians attracted to comp lite positions (a rather frequent occurrence), and they wanted to invite Sarah and Jim Sumner to do a conference, I would say, “Please do.” I’m guessing you would not.

You say:

[A] marriage where mutual submission and a genuine desire on the part of both partners to be under the headship of Christ exists there will not be an occasion for abuse.

That makes sense to me. But I also think this is true:

[A] marriage where a genuine desire on the part of both partners to be under the headship of Christ exists there will not be an occasion for abuse.

That is, the traditional and neo-traditional frameworks, so long as they are lived out in a genuinely Christian way, will also not be an occasion for abuse.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 11:10 am

Mary,

I stand corrected if you wish to engage in a constructive dialogue with those “in the middle” like Sarah Sumner. I am antagonistic towards those who only find fault with her positions. I see no reason to apologize for this.

If you wish to find common ground with someone, it is standard practice to start by noting commonalities. I am an egal who advocates that it is very important, for the sake of the truth and for the sake of the Gospel, to honor and cherish the teaching of Sarah Sumner and others like her, and to seek common ground with comp lites, traditional RCs and EOs, etc. Furthermore, it is common practice in dialogue between divergent positions to expect self-crticism from both sides. That’s my position, and it’s not far removed from that of Sarah Sumner.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 11:32 am

Suzanne,

Evangelicals of all stripes and traditional Jews, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox have tried in various ways to combat phenomena like easy recourse to abortion and divorce. No one, it seems to me, has been terribly successful, within their own ranks, and within society as a whole.

Abortion and divorce rates are on the decline in the US, for example, but they are nowhere near acceptable levels, particularly among the most vulnerable segments of the population. I don’t think statistics like these tip the balance in favor of a particular framework within which to live marriage.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 11:48 am

Faith,

I don’t want to disrespect the questions you ask, or your version of egalism. By all means, it is yours, and you are welcome to it.

My complaints are of a different nature. First of all, in a thread about Sarah Sumner’s contribution to the comp egal debate, you choose instead to take CBMW to task. I consider this to be disrespectful of Sumner’s contribution.

Secondly, you come across – correct me if I misunderstand you – as suggesting that non-egals uphold a “weird and oppressive” system. I have been arguing that non-egal frameworks of conceptualizing marriage are redeemable from a Christian point of view, and the positions of Paul and Peter in their household codes are incomprehensible and to be rejected if that is not so.

Comment by Sue

July 9, 2008 @ 11:50 am

A] marriage where a genuine desire on the part of both partners to be under the headship of Christ exists there will not be an occasion for abuse.

Since this is not something we can guarantee or impose, we need to provide frameworks that are safe. Safety is at risk when one person has more power than another. Personhood is lost by one person having all the authority and the other person all the submission. This is not safe, not healthy, not any way to live, and Peter says we accept it as Christ went to the cross. Some people have done so.

So were [Peter and Paul] in error not to ditch patriarchy as “simply wrong”?

This is a question that I struggle with. Could they have done so? Did they practice patriarchy, or did they only tell people to submit to patriarchy as they themselves submitted to the power of the state?

IMO Peter may really have been telling a woman to accept physical violence for the sake of the cross, as other Christians went to martyrdom. But then we have to call a spade a spade. Patriarchy, the power of a husband to decide when the wife is in submission and when she is not, and to punish her, was and is an abusive and absolutely cruel way to live, as was being torn apart by lions.

Is this what we teach?

For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. 20But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. …

Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands

Is it commendable to take the beating? Is that what we preach from the pulpit? Do we really counsel women to stay or not? What was Peter saying? Either we are with Peter on this, women submit to being beaten, (and I honestly believe that is what he was saying) or we are not?

If we have parted company with Peter here, then we need to admit it and not fudge around. Then maybe we need to part company with the interpretation that the man OUGHT to be the authority. That he is, in the NT era, may seem evident, but neither you nor I believe that the scriptures teach that God DESIGNED men to be the authority over women. How did every woman in the entire Bible make her decision? Not by asking her husband.

On being egalitarian, we don’t all get to have wonderful perfect marriages. That is not some magical reward for being an egalitarian.

That is, the traditional and neo-traditional frameworks, so long as they are lived out in a genuinely Christian way, will also not be an occasion for abuse.

No comfort for women married to less than perfect men.

It may be true that for some women, some aspects of traditionalism worked. But that does not mean that “male authority” in itself was functional. It means that women were able to create, around male authority, other authorities, other arenas of liberty and attachment, other relationships that mitigated the bankruptcy of male-based and male-only authority.

But we can spend all day in nostalgia for feminine space, the Victorian upper middle class luxury of not having to work outside the home, of drinking tea in the parlour while the men worked. Enough nostalgia for now. We have to live our real lives.

Comment by Sue

July 9, 2008 @ 11:58 am

John,

This is you on your own blog,

But marriage within an egal framework seems to have its own problems. They tend to have, after all, a very short shelf life, with negative consequences for those whose marriage fails and for their children.

Then this is you here,

Abortion and divorce rates are on the decline in the US, for example, but they are nowhere near acceptable levels, particularly among the most vulnerable segments of the population.I don’t think statistics like these tip the balance in favor of a particular framework within which to live marriage.

Are you or are you not using the shelf life of egalitarian marriages against it?

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 1:03 pm

Suzanne,

I appreciate your honest remarks about Peter’s teaching.

On the other hand, I think it’s obvious that Greco-Roman Christians preached a christologically qualified version of patriarchy, and, in best-case scenarios, practiced it as well.

With respect to egalitarianism and divorce, you caught me making an illogical argument. Thank you for pointing it out.

As you know, I do not counsel egals preparing for marriage to renounce egalitarianism. Not in the least, though I introduce concepts like honor and mutual submission which they are often unfamiliar with. I also invite them to reflect upon the strengths of their parents and grandparents’ more traditional marriages (if indeed they were strong marriages).

But I also believe that unqualified egalitarianism is a recipe for disaster. Unless 1 Cor 13 is its bedrock, an egalitarian marriage will be washed away in the first storm. Furthermore, you have to go into a marriage on the assumption that the vows are unbreakable. Marriage is meant to be “forever,” though it doesn’t always work out that way. In any case, divorce, as my wife Paola likes to point out in her pre-marriage counseling, is forever and ever whether one likes it or not.

The common tendency to regard marriage as a business contract to be dissolved whenever one or both parties choose to do so is a very unwise and destructive practice. That was the point I was trying to make.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 1:21 pm

I posted a summary reply to a few of those who have commented on this thread on my blog.

The words I use are forceful and may not meet CBE guidelines. Like all partisan blogs, CBE sometimes allows those who are thought to be on the side of the angels to stick it to others, but not the reverse. I have no quibble with that. I have done the same on my blog.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 1:24 pm

Suzanne,

you say:

Safety is at risk when one person has more power than another.

Is this also true, in your estimation, in the employer / employee and parent / child relationships?

Presumably not, so the problem must lie elsewhere.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 1:36 pm

Suzanne,

you say:

It may be true that for some women, some aspects of traditionalism worked. But that does not mean that “male authority” in itself was functional. It means that women were able to create, around male authority, other authorities, other arenas of liberty and attachment, other relationships that mitigated the bankruptcy of male-based and male-only authority.

Two remarks. First of all, this is how it still is, de facto or de jure, in a majority of places in the world today. Your past tense is a piece of rhetoric.

Secondly, the rest of your paragraph might be found acceptable to most men and women in hierarchically arranged marriages, except for the part about “the bankruptcy of male-based and male-only authority.”
Women and men, in such arrangements, do not normally think of its basis as bankrupt, nor would they describe it as a male-only authority arrangement.

Hierarchically arranged traditional marriages are almost always given a religious justification, and the norms of the religion in question trumps the “male-only authority” in a host of situations. You often lose sight of this.

Comment by Sue

July 9, 2008 @ 1:41 pm

Furthermore, you have to go into a marriage on the assumption that the vows are unbreakable

I deeply regret to say that I think that is the one teaching that has done more evil than any other I know.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 1:51 pm

I disagree. Some of the most remarkable examples of productive and long-lasting marriages I know of have endured because the man and the woman have fought to save the marriage in the face of something as egregious as adultery.

It’s a different matter when chronic physical abuse is involved. In those cases, however, it is often difficult to pull people apart, because the abuse takes place in a context of co-dependency.

Comment by Sue

July 9, 2008 @ 3:01 pm

You say that those who advocate for egalitarianism are “cultural imperialist.”

By your standards, to advocate any kind of justice or any kind of alleviation of suffering around the world is being a cultural imperialist. By your standards that Jesus was a cultural imperialist when he said tolove your neighbour as yourself.”

You use very strong language and no doubt I am the target but I cannot interact with this on your blog.

Comment by Sue

July 9, 2008 @ 3:02 pm

The first line is not a quote but my opening statement that John calls those who advocate egalitarian marriages “cultural imperialists.”

Comment by tiro

July 9, 2008 @ 3:43 pm

#87083,

John, “As you know, I do not counsel egals preparing for marriage to renounce egalitarianism. Not in the least, though I introduce concepts like honor and mutual submission which they are often unfamiliar with. I also invite them to reflect upon the strengths of their parents and grandparents’ more traditional marriages (if indeed they were strong marriages).”

Curious statement. My only experience with ‘egalitarian’ thought has been through Scripture, in which it is grounded in things like honor, respect, mutual submission, and promoting the welfare of the other. I cannot imagine being equality minded without those things.

I’m wondering if your concept of ‘egalitarian’ is some strange secular self serving independent minded thinking.

Comment by tiro

July 9, 2008 @ 3:50 pm

Sue you wrote, “Is it commendable to take the beating? Is that what we preach from the pulpit? Do we really counsel women to stay or not? What was Peter saying? Either we are with Peter on this, women submit to being beaten, (and I honestly believe that is what he was saying) or we are not?”

This is no easy subject. However, I thought the qualifying factors were 1) that Peter was talking to women with ungodly husbands 2) in an era where women could not divorce and for them to survive without a husband usually meant prostitution or worse.

Comment by tiro

July 9, 2008 @ 4:00 pm

#87073
John you wrote, “Tiro,
I enjoy your characterization of Peter and Paul as “sneakily conservative.” I don’t agree. They really were more conservative than you wish to admit. But at least you note they took a different approach than you do.”

Thanks, I think. ☺ I don’t think that we need to take that sneakily conservative approach today unless dealing with similar situations, such as ministering to ultra patriarchalistic individuals. Today, women can divorce. They don’t have to stay within abusive marriages. And a single woman is not subject to unknown atrocities just trying to survive on the streets. She can get a job.

Comment by tiro

July 9, 2008 @ 4:07 pm

#87071
John you write, “Because biblical egals, as Sarah Sumner also points out, are too often unwilling to admit that a number of biblical passages move in the direction of upholding authoritarian rather than egalitarian structures.”
I don’t agree. I rather see Paul and Peter encouraging mutuality, yet also how to survive in already existing authoritarian structures. But I do not see them upholding any authoritarian structures. I’d say that is pretty difficult to do within the framework of Christ’s words in Matt. 20 and others like them …
25 But Jesus called them to Himself and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. 26 Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. 27 And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave— 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

John you write, “Tiro, my problem with your approach is that in the process of determining that your version of egalitarianism is compatible with scripture – a conclusion with which I agree, with provisos – you deem as unscriptural the positions of Chrysostom, Luther, and Sarah Sumner, or those like them. At least, that is how I understand you. Please clarify.”

Perhaps you assume too much. I don’t have a “version” of egalitarianism. In my case my entire understanding of ‘egalitarian’ or equality minded thinking came through my deep study of Scripture. In my sheltered boon docks living, the only egalitarian secular experience I have had was working with men in the same professional skills.

And Yes, Luther has some horrible interpretations of the man woman dilemma. Chrysostom seems to hold varying degrees of both views. Sumner seems to be straddling the fence from what little I know of her theology on the subject.

Comment by Sue

July 9, 2008 @ 5:19 pm

Tiro,

You write,

This is no easy subject. However, I thought the qualifying factors were 1) that Peter was talking to women with ungodly husbands 2) in an era where women could not divorce and for them to survive without a husband usually meant prostitution or worse.

Where does Peter say that if your husband is a Christian and beats his wife, she is allowed to leave. He doesn’t. I believe that Peter is simply teaching people, women, slaves, martyrs, to endure their suffering because of the suffering of Christ.

We simply don’t live this way today. If a society kills Christians we don’t consider it cultural imperialism to protest this. We believe that saving someone’s life or saving them from pain and injury has a positive value. We also believe that liberty of the person has a positive value. At least some of us believe that.

I agree that the NT writers assume male authority, but I do not agree that they teach that it is instituted and desired by God.

Inequities between men and women on a world scale,

- cause more girl babies to be aborted than male babies

- prevent girls from equal access to education and basic nourishment

- cause marital violence to be a leading cause of homicide for women

- cause poverty overall for the family in the event the male bread winner is dead, handicapped or absent.

Male privilege on a world scale is a negative factor in the health and well-being of women and children, and we should not be ashamed to advocate equal rights for women. I am not ashamed to do this. I believe this is a worthy cause, and many many missionaries over the centuries have desired to improve women’s rights. I will not be taken to task for this gaol as purely an act of cultural imperialism as John calls it.

Comment by Sue

July 9, 2008 @ 6:08 pm

John,

The one argument that you make against egalitarian marriages is this.

But I also believe that unqualified egalitarianism is a recipe for disaster. Unless 1 Cor 13 is its bedrock, an egalitarian marriage will be washed away in the first storm.

There is absolutely no evidence to support this and in fact, all the evidence counters this. That there is less divorce in some other country that does not allow divorce is no argument. My sister was a missionary in Colombia, where divorce was not allowed in the church, and many people lived with someone they were not married to.

There is no basis for your arguments against egal marriages. They appear to have a lower divorce rate that complementarian marriages, in spite of the sanctions against divorce. You also admit that male authority marriages are subject to abuse. So, in balance, the arguments run against your conclusions.

The one most obvious case of male authority as abuse is in Africa where AIDS is spread from husband to wife.

Comment by tiro

July 9, 2008 @ 6:18 pm

Sue, “Where does Peter say that if your husband is a Christian and beats his wife, she is allowed to leave. He doesn’t. I believe that Peter is simply teaching people, women, slaves, martyrs, to endure their suffering because of the suffering of Christ.”

True it doesn’t. I just noted that Peter appears to be only addressing wives with unbelieving husbands. However, the unspoken is to endure all manner of suffering, which is why my noting that for them to survive without a husband usually meant prostitution or worse. So, women really couldn’t leave even if they wanted to.

The point being that we live in a different era. I think we are in agreement actually.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 7:43 pm

Tiro,

so I take it you regard Chrysostom, Luther, and Sarah Sumner as unbiblical fence-straddlers. What I have been arguing is that their teaching is in line with that of Paul and Peter before them. Structurally, they are identical. They retain what they thought needed to be retained among their cultural givens and qualify that christologically. I think you do the same, though you say you get your views straight from the Bible. Funny how no one reached the same conclusions you do until the modern era.

If you wish, I can email you the relevant excursus in Andrew Lincoln’s Word commentary that articulates the consensus I have been describing.

Comment by tiro

July 9, 2008 @ 7:49 pm

John, I wouldn’t give them a broad title of unbiblical. :) All of them are and were Christians. Just on this topic Luther is terrible, Chrysostom may have changed his mind in his later years because he seems to disagree with himself in some areas on this subject. As for Sumners I do not know the full extent of her belief system on this subject and find what I’ve been reading on here about her and in the article to be confusing and fence straddling.

You may email me the commentary if you wish, I would be interested. I posted a response on your blog, so you should have my email addy from there.

Comment by Sue

July 9, 2008 @ 8:02 pm

Tiro,

Yes, I do believe we are in agreement. I was just trying to explain how I have always read 2 Peter. I understand him to say that Christians are to endure the suffering that life brings with courage. But it is no reason not to advocate for equal rights for women in marriage on a world scale.

Perhaps I stand out more strongly than some in my persistent claim that an authority-submission relationship in marriage is akin to slavery. I am okay with that. I realize that there is a wide variety of opinion on this.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 8:18 pm

Suzanne,

I will let your mischaracterizations pass.

You sometimes make a clear distinction between hard and soft complementarianism and sometimes do not. You sometimes praise traditional marriage arrangements, or at least do not criticize them, such as those of the Victorian era, and sometimes you seem to suggest that any and every relationship with a power differential creates unacceptable risks. I’m having a hard time following you.

This is what I think your views are – please correct me if I’m wrong:

(1) You accept the consensus view that the NT household codes retain the authority-submission framework but qualify it christologically.

(2) You admit that the idea that hierarchy in marriage is divinely instituted is very widespread in Jewish and Christian tradition. The abuse or the perversion of the arrangement, not the arrangement itself, is consistently condemned in Jewish and Christian tradition. But you find this “compromise” unacceptable.

(3) You emphasize that authority-submission relationships – it doesn’t matter, presumably, whether the locus of the relationship is that of husband-wife, parent-child, or employer-employee – are subject to abuse. For reasons you have not explained, you imply that hierarchically ordered marriages, traditional and neo-traditional, should be considered forms of slavery, presumably, to be outlawed as slavery was. But you do not feel that way about hierarchically structured parent-child or employer-employee relationships. Or perhaps you wish to see all types of authority abolished. Please clarify.

(4) At times, you are careful to point out that male authority has traditionally been balanced by female authority in various ways. But you have not been clear about what “margin of error” is tolerable according to you. How balanced must the arrangement be to meet your standards? Sometimes it sounds like you have no real beef with comp lites and traditionalist RCs and EIs. But sometimes it sounds like you regard their understanding of marriage as sub-Christian or as wrong on other grounds. In that case, though you protest that you do not want to criticize Sarah Sumner’s positions, you are in fact in fundamental disagreement with her. Please clarify.

(5) I don’t know for sure if you have declared a culture war against traditional and neo-traditional understandings of the husband-wife relationship. Perhaps you don’t compare your stance to that of abolitionists of yore. You are free to clarify.

Sometimes I get the impression that you refuse to consider non-egal marriage arrangements as redeemable in Christ and consider egal marriage arrangements as acceptable in God’s sight quite apart from 1 Cor 13. If so, this is where we disagree, and yes, I wish to oppose that kind of viewpoint with all my strength.

I am surprised that you now claim that traditionally arranged marriages have higher rates of abuse than egal marriages. Now you take issue with a social scientist like Mary Stewart van Leeuwen as well?

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 8:40 pm

Suzanne,

You say:

I don’t see large groups of celibate and impoverished apostles traveling from one place to another subjecting themselves to a cruel and dictatorial government. I don’t see rafts of men resigning the right to vote or agitating to rejoin Britain. I don’t see Christians agitating for a return to any other authority structures which were in place at the time of the epistles.

I’m sorry, Suzanne, but I think you are guilty of cultural arrogance. First of all, truth is not decided by numbers. That the number of men and women that join an order like that of Mother Theresa and take vows of celibacy and chastity are few says nothing about the quality of their Christian witness. You encourage me to blog more often about men and women in our day who do precisely what you seem to deride: take vows of chastity and poverty and subject themselves to cruel and dictatorial governments out of devotion to the Gospel.

You also diminish the witness of the historical Anabaptist tradition, for whom the vote and participation in the life of the state and its laws are irrelevant at best and evil at worst.

Finally, you underestimate the breadth and depth of neo-traditionalism in our day. It is about restoring clearer lines of authority, not only in the husband-wife relationship, but in the parent-child relationship, and in the workplace. The truth of this approach is not decided by numbers either, but if it were, one might argue as you do, and claim that its growing appeal in the world today is a reflection thereof.

Comment by Gem

July 9, 2008 @ 9:02 pm

Is this what we teach?

For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. 20But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. …

Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands

Is it commendable to take the beating? Is that what we preach from the pulpit? Do we really counsel women to stay or not? What was Peter saying? Either we are with Peter on this, women submit to being beaten, (and I honestly believe that is what he was saying) or we are not?

Sue, you asked “Is this what we teach?”. Every bit of God Word is precious and if we are understanding it in a way which reflects poorly upon God then the problem is our understanding, not God’s Word. I wouldn’t teach it that way at all. Here is some of what I would say about 1 Peter for women (people?) struggling in their marriages because I have been there and done that and 1 Peter really helped and challenged me to grow:

Did you know 1 Peter says you can “love life and see good days”? :)

Its a promise from God’s Word,
but it is conditional.
It is NOT conditional upon anything my husband does or does not do,
It is completely conditional upon my following Jesus’ role model.

I used to be very bitter and resentful. Once I became aware of these deeply rooted sins, I really stuggled with them and battled them for a couple years… but the Lord helped me dig out from their snares.

That whole book of 1 Peter is very deep and provided much wisdom and guidance for me… Indeed Jesus is given as the role model (to both husbands and wives)…. Look at the calling and the *promises*

21For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:

22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:

23 Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:

…

1 ¶ Likewise, ye wives, …

7 Likewise, ye husbands, …

8 ¶ Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous:

9 Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a *blessing*.

10 For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile:

11 Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it.

I noticed the instructions for responding to verbal abuse (no insulting back, but blessing). And I noticed a “no guile” sandwich (2:22; 3:10) around the renowned Sarah role model of submission . For me- timid, wimpy, weak, doormat type that I was- it meant I had to start speaking up. God would not allow me to continue to be conflict avoidant and brush things under the rug in denial. It was scary and I was absolutely horrible at it at first… Takes practice.

In reflecting upon this passage and upon the role model of Sarah, I have come to identify with Sarah. (I commented on Sarah in 86979). She goes through a maturing process and comes to the place of having a great deal of influence and authority in her household. When Abram and Sarai are called, they don’t know God deeply at first. The covenants progress, and the accounts of them hearing God’s voice and seeing His miraculous interventions increase as they mature.

God’s miraculous interventions. HE is the same God. I’ve am more aware of His miraculous interventions now having experienced them so vividly on occasion And I think its probably far far more often than I am aware but I was not tuned in to give Him the credit for that. In fact I think that- like Joseph in the Bible- even things that were meant for evil and hurt me very deeply, even those things God has turned around for good.

Comment by John

July 9, 2008 @ 9:04 pm

GEM,

I don’t think your etymologizing exegesis is defensible, but I think your command of scripture is otherwise excellent. I think you are perfectly capable of going head to head with biblical comps and scoring a point or two.

However, whereas there are Christians who believe that revelation has progressed beyond the New Testament and that extra-biblical truths received hence can be used to declare earlier and/or traditional understandings as no longer acceptable, more traditional Christians, myself included, do not take that approach. The Reformation also steadfastly resisted that approach.

Perhaps you see no danger in recognizing a standard of truth outside of Scripture. For the classic statement against your approach, see the Barmen Declaration (easily googled, I imagine).

I don’t think, in any case, that you have shown that Sarah Sumner’s approach, which preserves and contemporizes the gender-differentiated exhortation typical of the NT household codes, is less biblical than your approach. If that is because you accept that her approach is a biblically defensible position, I would accuse you of being a person with an open mind and an open heart.

That’s part of the United Methodist motto, by the way. To others that means, empty-headed and morally undiscriminating. To my mind it means “catholic” and “evangelical” in the sense Wesley understood those terms.

Comment by faith

July 9, 2008 @ 9:04 pm

john, in a day in which women run companies, serve in the Senate and congress, are supreme court judges, presidential candidates, in which they are professors in every subject,,, yes your position regarding women in the home and church is really wierd and oppressive. There is no biological reason why women cannot lead and succeed in every sphere.

Comment by Sue

July 9, 2008 @ 9:22 pm

As usual you do not cite me nor do you state with clarity your own position. You simplify and generalize. This makes any dialogue very difficult.

You sometimes praise traditional marriage arrangements, or at least do not criticize them, such as those of the Victorian era, and sometimes you seem to suggest that any and every relationship with a power differential creates unacceptable risks. I’m having a hard time following you.

I said that for a certain well off class of woman, this could be a livable situation. The point is that if there is balancing arena of female authority that would make a difference, and the relationship would not be an undiluted authority-submission relationship. By female authority, I do not mean only that a woman can refuse to do something sinful.

I mean that every human being must have an arena of authority. If deprived they descend into inhumanity. An arena of female authority might come from the family connection or financial resources of the wife, or from the arrangement of space in a house, or the relationship of the wife to the children and their upbringing, or where she sits at the dining room table. She may derive real authority from any of these, or from the understanding that the bedroom is her domain.

However, in an authority-submission relationship, all spaces are the domain of the man. The bedroom, parlour, kitchen, dining room and every activity of the children.

A woman with a traditional understanding of marriage entering an authority-submission relationship realizes in very short order that she is now a virtual slave. She is deprived of all traditional arenas and space.

I don”t know how to explain how this is both a descent into insanity and yet it is possible to keep this invisible to others. It is the deepest and most devastating abuse. It fractures the person.

To not understand this and say that an authority-submission arrangement is valid, is to be negligent in the extreme. It is a disregard for the right to sanity for a woman.

(1) You accept the consensus view that the NT household codes retain the authority-submission framework but qualify it christologically.

Yes, they retain the framework as well as the social framework of the day. It was a time when a man could have his wife undergo an abortion. It was a cruel age. Most of the women in the NT narratives did not seem to be in any such arrangement, except Sapphira.

(2) You admit that the idea that hierarchy in marriage is divinely instituted is very widespread in Jewish and Christian tradition. The abuse or the perversion of the arrangement, not the arrangement itself, is consistently condemned in Jewish and Christian tradition. But you find this “compromise” unacceptable.

Yes I find this compromise unacceptable. Couples today live in single family dwellings, and the wife is supposed to have her husband as her closest confidante. She is not encouraged to share all secrets with her mother or sister. Another female relative is no longer the relevant other. She may live a thousand miles from her parents. Her brothers are unwilling to beat the bejabbers out of the erring husband. Maybe she does not have brothers. Maybe she is financially dependent on her husband who will not be able to work in jail, if she calls the police. Probably 75% of women do not get out of abusive situations. The collateral damage is unacceptable to me. I do not believe that any other arrangement than egalitarianism is equitable to women. I don’t mean a bunch of silly rules about who does what. I mean equal and balancing authority, shared or contrasting, it doesn’t matter.

You talk about codependency, but you do not talk about the role that the shame of divorce, or Bible teaching, or blaming the wife for abuse has in this. Nothing that you have ever said on this topic resonates with me as real.

I do understand your beef with egalitarianism but I believe the centre of the problem does not rest on authority and submission but on balancing and sharing out, on giving each other personal liberty and permission, and knowing not to take too much permission for oneself. I don’t see that a husband and wife have to arrange the shared work in any rigid way, nor do most egalitarians. There should be lots of complementarity but not inequality of authority.

You emphasize that authority-submission relationships – it doesn’t matter, presumably, whether the locus of the relationship is that of husband-wife, parent-child, or employer-employee – are subject to abuse

I do not ever interact with my employee without being very aware of the law, the collective agreement and my close connection to other employees. I get on well with my administrator, but I do not have to sleep with him. Even if he were horrible, I could go home at night. There used to be a day when a woman might be at the mercy of a lecherous employer. I am grateful for recent changes in the name of feminism.

The raising of children is one place where we must have authority over the child. We have more intelligence and strength in order to keep them safe. However, we accord them an ever-growing arena of authority. Maybe you would like to read this story.

I work with children of the lowest IQ. Matters of personal exousia (authority/ permission/ liberty) are absolutely crucial. I am considered exceptional in my interaction with these children because I know that everyone needs personal authority. I know what it is to live without. And I cannot agree with anything that you have said on this topic. It is shameful beyond all belief that anyone thinks that another human being can live in total submission. Even in the strictest orders a person lived in community, not in an authority-submission dyad. Such a thing belongs in the most vile and filthy literature available. A person needs their own bedroom or they cannot live in total submission. A marriage like that cannot last. Yes, as I said, I saw my friend’s arms covered in scar tissue, and that is how some women are inside.

I do not consider that RCs and EIs, and many traditionalists are in authority-submission marriages. Someone has already said that here. As far as Asian cultures are concerned, many women have their own strong arena of authority. Don’t imagine otherwise. And yet other females are aborted, raped, killed and destroyed.

I have never read such a lot of unsupported nonsense in my life. You start off complaining that egal marriages are short-lived. When that is proved to be unfounded you move on to another premise. You claim to be egal but you never once say if you think male only authority is instituted by God or not.

The women of the scriptures had their arena of authority from start to finish. The CBMW teaching that men and women are in the image of God, in that men reflect authority and women submission is profoundly wrong and needs to be critiqued. Absolute authority on the part of the man, and absolute submission on the part of the women defaces God and humanity. I don’t know how anyone can condone the deconstruction of all that it means to be human.

Comment by Sue

July 9, 2008 @ 9:34 pm

John,

You encourage me to blog more often about men and women in our day who do precisely what you seem to deride:

I do not deride it. You misrepresent me and use incredibly loaded language. Don’t make oblique and snide remarks about trying to educate me.

You also diminish the witness of the historical Anabaptist tradition, for whom the vote and participation in the life of the state and its laws are irrelevant at best and evil at worst.

I do not diminish it. This is my own heritage. I lived that way and my parents lived that way. I do not see that the CBMW is teaching this. You take me at the opposite of what I say every time I speak. I know how to live this way. I was holding this up as an example of what the male authority men do NOT do. You miss my point entirely.

Are you deliberately trying to represent me to be the opposite of what I am? You have yet to actually cut and paste anything I write and respond to it. The disrespect shown for my words is unacceptable.

Comment by Sue

July 9, 2008 @ 9:40 pm

Gem,

Thank you for writing what you did. When you spoke up, that meant you were using authority. Perhaps God’s authority but through a woman. This is essential. If someone wants to teach that women can survive with no personal authority, that is their business but I will fight it.

Comment by Liz

July 9, 2008 @ 10:22 pm

Hi to everyone. After 175 comments on this thread we have decided to close the topic so we can move on to other things. For those who want to continue the discussion we understand it has been transferred to John’s site where it can be moderated as he sees fit.

On The Scroll we do not sanction critical comments to one another and in our observation the pro-CBE people have adhered to the blog guidelines as written on the home page. This blog is designed to be a place of peaceful interaction and we perceive that if this conversation is continued it might degenerate into something less than what is desired.

SO..any further comments will be deleted and we will write to all who have made recent comments to clarify this decision.